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LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY : 

DELINEATING 

THE     EVIDENT     INDICATIONS     OF     MORAL 

CHARACTER   PERTAINING    TO    THE 

FUTURE    STATE. 


BEING   AN 


INTRODUCT 


TO 


DODDRIDGE'S 


3£lfse  anTi  ^Ptofltcss  of  SElclfflfon  fn  tjc  Soul. 


7 

By   JOHN   FOSTER, 

Author  of  Essays  on  Decision  of  Character,  &c. 


BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED   BY   JAMES   LORING, 
132  Washington  Street. 


1840. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER    I. 

INFLUENCE    OF    BOOKS    WRITTEN    BY   AUTHORS 

OF     OPPOSITE     MORAL     CHARACTER. THEIR 

ASPECT    ON    THE    LIFE    TO    COME,         ....        5 

CHAPTER   II. 

REFLECTIONS  ON  THE  FUTURE  HAPPINESS  OR 
MISERY  OF  SERIOUS  OR  INCONSIDERATE 
READERS, 18 

CHAPTER   III. 

PRINCIPLES  OF  AN  INFIDEL  CONTRASTED  WITH 

THOSE    OF    A   BELIEVER    IN    CHRISTIANITY,    .      26 

CHAPTER   IV. 

EXPOSTULATIONS  TO  YOUNG  PERSONS  FROM 
THE  CONSIDERATION  OF  THE  IMMORTALITY 
OF  THE  SOUL,  ITS  RELATION  TO  ETERNITY, 
AND    ITS   ACCOUNTABLENESS    TO    GOD,  ...      53 

CHAPTER   V. 

THE  DECEPTIONS  AND  IMMINENT  HAZARDS  OF 
DEFERRING  RELIGION  AND  THE  CARE  OF 
THE  SOUL  TO  AN  UNCERTAIN  FUTURE  TIME,   90 


iv  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER   VI. 

AFFECTING  PORTRAIT   OF  A  MAN  OF  THE 

WORLD, 116 

CHAPTER   VII. 

REMONSTRANCES  AND  EXPOSTULATIONS 

AGAINST  THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  WORLDLING, 
ADDRESSED  TO  HIS  CONSCIENCE  FROM  THE 
MOST    WEIGHTY    CONSIDERATIONS,    ....    128 

CHAPTER   VIII. 

MEN  OF  THE  WORLD,  WHILE  THEY  DISTRUST 
AND  ENVY  EACH  OTHER,  AS  RIVALS  IN  THEIR 
SORDID  PURSUITS,  VOLUNTARILY  RENOUNCE 
THE  SOCIETY  AND  CONFIDENCE  OF  THE  MOST 
ESTIMABLE    PERSONS, 181 

CHAPTER   IX. 

THE  IRRELIGIOUS  AND  SORDID  DO  NOT  EN- 
JOY THE  PRESENT  LIFE,  AND  MEET  UN- 
MINGLED    WRETCHEDNESS    IN   THE   FUTURE,     190 

CHAPTER  X. 

CONCLUDING  ADMONITION, 203 


LIVING  FOR  IMMOllTALITY. 


CHAPTER    I. 

INFLUENCE  OF  BOOKS  WRITTEN  BY  AUTHORS  OF 
OPPOSITE  MORAL  CHARACTER. — THEIR  ASPECT 
ON   THE    LIFE    TO    COME. 

There  are  more  ways  to  derive  instruction 
from  books,  than  the  direct  and  chief  one,  of 
applying  the  attention  to  what  they  contain. 
Things  connected  with  them,  by  natural  or 
casual  association,  will  sometimes  suggest  them- 
selves to  a  reflective  and  imaijinative  reader. 
and  divert  him  into  secondary  trains  of  ideas. 
In  these  the  mind  may,  indeed,  float  along  in 
perfect  indolence,  and  acquire  no  good,  but  a 
serious  disposition  might  regulate  them  to  a 
profitable  result. 

Of  these  extraneous  ideas,  the  most  obviously 
occurring,  as  being  the  most  directly  associated 
with  the  book,   may   be   some  recollections  or 
2 


6  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

conjectures  concerning  the  author.  Perhaps 
the  most  remarkable  circnm.^taiices  of  his  life, 
and  qualities  of  his  character,  are  well  known. 
Some  of  these  may  come  on  the  reader's  mind, 
suspend  his  attention  to  the  written  thoughts, 
and  draw  him  away  into  meditation  on  the  per- 
son, perhaps  now  no  longer  on  earth,  who  once 
thought  them,  and  deliberately  put  them  in  the 
words  just  seen  on  the  page. 

And   the  reminiscences,   which   thus   bring 
what   the   author   was    into    conjunction    wkh 
what  he  has  written,  display  the  relation  be- 
tween them,  greatly  varying  in  character  in  the 
different   instances.     The    book,    we   will  sup- 
pose, teaches  genuine  wisdom,  and   forcibly  in- 
culcates the   best  principles ;    and   it   may   be 
that   the   author  is  remembered  or  recorded  to 
have  been  worthy   of  his  doctrine,  an  examj)le 
of  the  virtues  of  which  we  are  admiring  him  as 
the  advocate,  and   one  of  the  excellent  of  the 
earth.     In  this  case,  we  have  a  pleasing  reflec- 
tion from  his  character  shed  on    his   pages.     It 
is  the   whole   man,   faithfully  affirming  to   us, 
with  his   heart  and  life,   all  that  his  language 
expresses  in  testimony   to   truth   and  goodness. 
The  living  spirit  and  practice  of  the  man  have 
left  an  evidence  and   a  power  to  animate  these 
sentences  of  the  now  silent  instructor.     If,   at 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  7 

his  happy  departure,  his  "  works  followed  him," 
they  still  also  follow  his  words.  And  thus  the 
reader  feels  the  henefit  of  that  principle  of  as- 
sociation, by  which  his  thoughts,  at  some  mo- 
ments, pass  from  the  writing  to  the  author. 

But  a   very  different  case   is  too  possible,  ia 
which  a  dark  haunting  of  the  author's  memory 
shill    at   times   cast    a   shade   over   sentences 
bright  with  intelligence,  strong  in  the  assertion, 
perhaps  in  the  vindication,   of  important  prin- 
ciples of  truth  and   virtue,  and  expressed  with 
all  the  appearance  of  sincere  respect   for  them. 
The  idea  of  him  may  intervene  with  the  effect 
of  a  counteracting   malignant  genius,  to  blast 
the  fairest,  and  enervate  the  strongest,  forms  of 
thought  which  he  has  presented   to  please  and 
instruct  us.     They  cannot  speak  to  us  without 
our  seeming  to  hear  an  under  voice,  as  if  mock- 
ing the   attention   and  complacency  which  we 
were   beginning  to  give   to  them.     There  may 
have  been  left  such  memorials  of  the  author's 
character,  as  to  force  upon  us  a  doubt  whether 
he  was  honest  in  what   he   wrote  ;  whether  the 
principles  which  he   displayed   so   much  ability 
in  maintaining   were   his  own    sincere  convic- 
tions.    Or,  where   there   may  not  be   cause  for 
so  grave  a  suspicion,  it  may  be  too  probable  or 
evident  that   his  exertions  were  applied   in  a 


8  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

mere  professional  capacity,  on  a  calculation  of 
distinction  and  advancement,  and  without  any 
cordial  sense  of  the  value  of  truth.  Or,  while 
we  may  be  convinced  that  we  are  reading  the 
honest  dictates  of  his  judgment,  and  that  he  did 
really  feel,  at  the  time  of  writing,  a  concern 
about  their  application  to  his  own  conduct,  we 
may  have  the  mortification  to  know  that  the 
tenor  of  his  life,  or  many  circumstances  in  it, 
were  in  melancholy  contrariety  to  his  book. 
It  is  even  related  of  a  man  of  orenius,  of  dissi* 
pated  habits,  that  he  published  a  book  of  piety, 
written  by  him  in  perfect  good  faith,  and  for 
the  very  purpose  of  imposing  a  restraint  on  his 
own  follies  and  vices,  by  this  expedient  of  com- 
bining with  the  testimony  of  his  conscience,  a 
formal  pledge  to  the  public, — and  that  he  did 
it  in  vain. 

This  dark  obtrusion  of  the  author's  charac- 
ter may  tend,  in  its  immediate  effect,  to  lessen 
the  force  of  the  sentiments  and  arguments  by 
which  he  seemed  to  be  trainincr  us  to  right 
judgment  and  practice.  If  a  man  who  could 
think  with  such  clear  intelligence,  could  rea- 
son  so  convincingly,  could  estimate  the  quality 
of  things,  as  it  would  appear  to  us,  so  impar- 
tially and  justly,  and  could  advise  and  incul- 
cate with  such  gravity,  and  semblance  of  being 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  9 

in  earnest, — if  such  a  man  might,  nevertheless, 
be   even   skeptical    respecting  the   very  princi- 
ples which  he  seems  to  prove,  or  might,  while 
believing  them,  maintain  them  with  no  better 
intention   than  that  of  making  a  display  of  his 
ability,  in  order  to  advance  himself  in   fame  or 
lucre,   or   might  feel   a   sincere  esteem    for  the 
truths  and   precepts   which   he  taught,  and  yet 
allow   himself  to  act   in    flagrant    violation   of 
them, — can  there   be   any   real  authority,  any 
solid  importance,  in  the  instructions  we  are  re- 
ceiving from  his  book  ?    But   this  inauspicious 
relation  of  the  author  to  his  writings  may  turn 
to  the  reader's  benefit,   if  he  will   be  quite  se- 
rious.    It   will   force  on   his  view  another  ex- 
posure and  exemplification  of  the  sad  disorder 
into  which  our  nature   has  fallen  ;  it  will  show 
him  of  how  little  avail  is  a  mere  intellectual  ex- 
ercise of  the   mind   on   important  truth;    and 
how  much  more  is  indispensable  to  the  salutary 
effect  of  right  principles,  than   a  bare  assent  of 
the  judgment,    however  decided.     It   will  ad- 
monish him  that  the  efficacy  of  truth  depends 
on  a  habitual   communication  of  the  soul  with 
the  God  of  truth.     He  has  the  author  revisiting 
him,  as   from  the  dead,  to  apprize   him  by  ex- 
ample, thcU  truths  the  most  important  may  pass 
in  the  train  of  his  thoughts,  or  may  be  retained 
2* 


10  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

in  his  judgment  as  his  fixed  opinions,  all  in 
vain,  unless  they  be  brought  and  kept  in  con- 
tact with  his  conscience,  and  his  conscience  be 
kept  habitually  reverent  to  the  Supreme  Au- 
thority. And  shall  our  Lord's  declaration  re- 
specting a  real  intervention  of  one  from  the  de- 
parted be  verified  in  this  case  too ;  so  that  it 
shall  be  entirely  unavailing  for  this  gloomy  ap- 
parition to  the  reader's  mind,  to  warn  him 
against  trifling  with  the  serious  instructions  in 
the  book,  as  he  that  wrote  them  had  trifled, 
and  adding  one  more  to  the  number  of  those 
who  have  deliberately  gone  the  way  to  ruin, 
bearing  a  lamp  lighted  by  heaven  in  their  hand  ! 
This  representation  of  the  secondary  advan- 
tage derivable  from  books,  supposes  them  to  be 
read.  But,  even  in  the  most  cursory  notice  of 
them,  when  the  attention  is  engaged  by  no  one 
in  particular,  ideas  may  be  started  of  a  tenden- 
cy not  wholly  foreign  to  instruction.  A  reflec- 
tive person,  in  his  library,  in  some  hour  of  in- 
termitted application,  when  the  mind  is  surren- 
dered to  vagrant  musing,  may  glance  along  the 
ranges  of  volumes,  with  a  slight  recognition  of 
the  authors,  in  long  miscellaneous  array  of  an- 
cients and  moderns.  And  that  musing  may 
become  shaped  into  ideas  like  these :  What  a 
number  of  our  busy  race  have  deemed  them- 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  H 

selves  capable  of  informing  and  directing  the 
rest  of  mankind.  How  many  who  were  pow- 
erful in  thought,  or  laborious  in  research,  have 
had  their  brief  season  under  the  sun,  have  at- 
tained their  respective  shares  of  influence  and 
fame,  and  are  now  no  lonjrer  on  earth  !  What 
a  vast  amount  is  collected  here  of  the  results  of 
the  most  strenuous  and  protracted  exertions  of 
so  many  minds!  What  were,  in  each  of  these 
claimants  that  the  world  should  think  as  they 
did,  the  most  prevailing  motives?  How  many 
of  them  sincerely  loved  truth,  honestly  sought 
it,  and  faithfully,  to  the  best  of  their  knowledge, 
declared  it?  What  misht  be  the  circumstan- 
ces  and  influences  which  determined,  in  the 
case  of  that  one  author,  and  the  next,  and  the 
next  again,  their  own  modes  of  opinion  ?  How 
many  of  them  were  aware,  and  acted  on  the 
conviction,  of  the  importance  of  a  devout  in- 
tercourse with  heaven,  in  order  to  their  being 
truly  wise  themselves,  and  to  their  being  the 
successful  teachers  of  wisdom  ?  How  many 
of  them  were  actuated  by  a  genuine  desire  to 
benefit  their  fellow  mortals  ?  What  may  be 
conjectured  as  to  the  degree  of  complacency 
with  which  many  of  them  have  since,  in  a  state 
where  they  better  knew  the  truth  of  things,  and 
better   knew  themselves,   regarded  the  spirit  in 


12  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

which  they  speculated,  and  the  tendency  of 
what  they  left  to  speak  in  their  name  after  they 
were  gone? 

And  how  much  have  they  actually  done  for 
truth  and  ricrhleousness  in  the  world  1  Do  not 
the  contents  of  these  accumulated  volumes  con- 
stitute a  chaos  of  all  discordant  and  contradic- 
tory principles,  theories,  representations  of  fact, 
and  figurings  of  imagination  ?  Could  I  not  in- 
stantly place  beside  each  other  the  works  of 
two  noted  authors,  who  maintain  for  truth  di? 
rectly  opposite  doctrines,  or  systems  of  doc- 
trines ;  and  then  add  a  third  book,  which  ex- 
plodes them  both  ?  I  can  take  some  one  book, 
in  which  the  prime  spirits  of  the  world,  through 
all  time,  are  brought  together,  announcing  the 
speculations  which  they,  respectively,  proclaim- 
ed to  be  the  essence  of  all  wisdom,  protesting 
with  solemn  censure,  or  sneering  contempt, 
against  the  dogmas  and  theories  of  one  another, 
and  conflicting  in  a  huge  Babel  of  all  imagin- 
able opinions  and  vagaries.*  Within  these  as- 
sembled volumes,  how  many  errors  in  doctrine 
may  there  not  be  maintained  ;  how  many  bad 
practical  principles  palliated,  justified,  or  dis- 
played in  seductive  exemplification  ;  how  many 

*  For  example,  the  works  of  Bruckcr. 


LIVING  FOR  TAniOliTALITV.  13 

good  ones  endeavored  to  be  supplanted  ;  how 
miny  absurdities  and  vain  fancies  set  forth  in 
plausible  colors  !  Is  it  not  as  if  the  intellect  of 
man  had  been  surrendered  to  be  the  sport  of 
some  malicious  and  powerful  spiritual  agent, 
who  could  delight  in  playing  it  through  all 
traverses,  freaks,  and  mazes  of  fantastic  move- 
ment, mocking  at  its  self-importance,  diverted 
at  its  follies,  gratified  most  of  all  when  it  is  per- 
verted to  the  greatest  mischief;  and  malig- 
nantly providing  for  the  perpetuation  of  the 
effect  of  all  this,  through  subsequent  time,  by 
instigating  the  ablest  of  the  minds  thus  sported 
with,  to  keep  their  own  perversions  in  opera- 
tion on  posterity  through  the  instrumentality  of 
their  books  ?  If  such  a  thing  might  be  as  the 
intervention  of  the  agency  of  a  better  and  more 
potent  intelligence,  to  cause,  by  one  instantan- 
eous action  on  all  those  books,  the  obliteration 
of  all  that  is  fallacious,  pernicious,  or  useless  in 
them,  what  millions  of  pages  would  be  blanched 
in  our  crowded  libraries  ! 

The  man  who  is  supposed  to  be  thoughtfully 
passing  his  eye  over  a  large  array  of  books, 
may  make  such  reflections,  without  being  guilty 
of  arrogance.  It  is  not  supposed  that  he  can 
be  intimately  acquainted  with  the  contents  of 
the  majority  of  them,  or  that  he  is  assuming  to 


14  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

be  the  infallible  judge  how  much  might  justly 
be  doomed  to  oblivion  in  those  which  he  has 
examined.  But  being  apprized,  in  a  general 
way,  of  the  qualities  of  a  large  proportion  of 
them  ;  having  learned  something  of  the  charac- 
ters of  many  of  the  authors:  and  to  what  class, 
or  party,  or  school,  to  what  faith,  or  in  some 
instances  no  faith,  to  what  prevailing  system  of 
an  age  or  nation,  or  to  what  singularities  of 
opinion  they  were  severally  addicted,  he  neces- 
sarily knows  that  the  multifarious  collection  ' 
contains  innumerable  things  at  variance  with 
intellectual  and  moral  rectitude.  He  knows, 
that  if  each  author  had  one  living  disciple 
wholly  obsequious  to  him,  and  if  all  these  dis- 
ciples could  be  brought  together,  there  would 
be  a  company  in  which  almost  every  error  of 
the  human  understanding,  and  every  wrong  dis- 
position and  practice,  would  have  an  advocate. 
Such  ideas,  arising  in  the  exterior  survey  of 
the  vvorks  of  so  many  intellects,  may  yield  some 
instruction  to  a  reflective  man.  While  the 
swarm  of  notions  and  conceits  of  fancy  comes 
upon  his  mental  sight  thick  and  tumultuous, 
and  as  lawlessly  capricious  in  their  shapes  as 
the  imps  figured  as  thronging  about  the  ma- 
gician, he  may  reflect  what  the  reason  of  man, 
which  should  have   been  the  light  and  glory  of 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  15 

such  a  creature  of  God,  has  become,  and  be- 
come capable  of  producing,  through  some  <iis- 
astrous  lapse  into  disorder.  He  may  consider 
what  the  rational  facidty  has  been,  and  would 
ever  be,  in  the  absence  of  divine  revelation  ; 
and  also  what  necessity  there  is  for  a  correc- 
tive and  regulating  influence  from  above  on  the 
mind,  if,  n  at  ivit  list  audi  ng  that  revelation,  it  can 
have  wantoned  into  so  many  aberrations.  It 
will  be  shown  him  under  what  ill  omens  he  will 
apply  himself  to  the  study  of  the  most  impor- 
tant subjects  without  sim|)licity  in  his  motives, 
and  a  conscientious  care  of  the  procedure  of  his 
judgment.  He  may  think,  and  deplore  to 
think,  what  mischief  may  have  sprung  from  the 
intellectual  obliquity,  the  pride,  the  turpitude, 
the  irreligion,  or  even  the  carelessness,  of  one 
mind  of  great  powers  of  seduction.  He  may 
be  mortified  to  see  how  fully  can  hnk  itself  to 
intelligence,  as  if  to  expose  it  to  scorn,  while 
he  reflects  how  many  men  of  superior  intellect, 
who  therefore  ought  not  to  have  been  the  dupes 
of  a  phantasm,  have  been  impelled  to  the  most 
intense  exertion  by  the  passion  to  be  renowned 
in  this  world,  where  they  were  to  stay  so  short 
a  time — to  be  renowned  in  it,  even  after  they 
should  have  passed  away  beyond  the  possible 
enjoyment  of  their   fame  :  and  a  sentiment  of 


16  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

mingled  contempt  and  pity  will  arise  at  the 
failure  of  these  anticipations  in  the  case  of 
some  of  them,  whose  earnest,  indefatigable  la- 
bors have  barely  preserved  their  names  from 
oblivion.  While  his  look  is  arrested  by  the 
works  of  some  of  those  of  highest  distinction, 
splendid  in  literary  achievement  and  lasting 
fame,  it  may  be  suggested  to  his  thoughts,  with 
respect  to  one  of  them,  and  another,  whether, 
on  a  Christian  estimate  of  things,  he  would  be 
deliberately  willing,  were  it  possible,  to  shine  ' 
in  all  that  splendor  in  his  own  and  a  succeed- 
ing age,  on  the  condition  of  being  just  of  the 
same  spirit  toward  God  and  the  best  interests 
of  mankind,  as  those  celebrated  men.  While 
pronouncing  their  names,  and  looking  at  these 
volumes,  in  which  they  have  left  a  representa- 
tive existence  on  earth,  left  the  form  and  ac- 
tion of  their  minds  embodied  in  a  more  durable 
vehicle  than  their  once  animated  clay,  how 
striking  to  think,  that  somewhere,  and  in  some 
certain  condition,  they  themselves  are  existing 
still ;  existing  as  really  and  personally  as  when 
they  were  revolving  the  thoughts  and  writing 
the  sentences  which  fill  these  books  !  From 
the  character  of  these  images  of  their  minds, 
these  enshrined  statues,  created  to  receive 
homage   for   tffera  after  they   are   gone,   what 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  17 

may  be  deemed  of  their  present  condition  else- 
where ?  The  musing  of  our  contemplatist  may 
at  times  be  led  to  solemn  conjectures  at  the 
award  which  these  great  intellectual  performers 
have  found  in  another  state ;  and  he  follows 
some  of  them  with  a  very  dark  surmise. 

His  eye  may  rest  on  a  book  inscribed  with  a 
name  far  less  "  proudly  eminent"  in  the  honors 
of  genius   and    talent ;   but   a   work  which  has 
unquestionably  done  very  great,  and  almost  un- 
mixed good.     And  he  may  be  reminded  of  that 
sovereignty  of  the  Governor  of  the  world  in  his 
selection   and   apj)ointment,    by    which,    minds 
greatly  below  the  highest  order  of  natural  abil- 
ity may  be  rendered  pre-eminent  in  usefulness. 
It  may  also  occur   to  him,  diverting  for  an  in- 
stant from  all  the    ranks  and  varieties  of  those 
who  have  aspired  to  be  teachers  of  mankind,  to 
reflect  how  many  humble  spirits,  that  never  at- 
tempted any   of  the  thousand  speculations,  nor 
revelled    in   the  literary    luxuries,  contained  in 
these  books,   have  nevertheless  passed  worthily 
and  happily  through   the   world,  into  a  region 
where   it  may  be  the   appointed  result  and  re- 
ward  of  fervent  piety,   in    inferior  faculties,  to 
overtake,  by  one  mighty  bound,  the  intellectual 
magnitude  of  those   who  had   previously   been 
much     more    powerful    minds.      And   finally, 
3 


18  LIVLNG  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

when  he  has  such  evidence  that  this  world  has 
been  always  a  tenebrious  and  ilhisory  scene, 
for  the  search  after  truth  by  a  spiritual  nature 
itself  weak,  perverted,  and  obscured,  he  may 
surely  feel  some  aspirations  awakened  toward 
that  otiier  world,  where  the  objects  of  intelli- 
gence will  be  unveiled,  to  faculties  rectified 
and  nobly  enlarged  for  their  contemplation. 


CHAPTER    II. 

REFLECTIONS  ON    THE    FUTURE  HAPPINESS  OR  MIS- 
ERY OF  SERIOUS   OR  INCONSIDERATE  READERS. 

Thus  far,  the  instructive  reflections  which 
even  the  mere  exterior  of  an  accumulation  of 
books  may  suggest,  are  supposed  to  occur  in 
the  way  of  thinking  of  the  authors.  But  the 
same  books  may  also  excite  some  interesting 
ideas,  through  their  less  obvious,  but  not  alto- 
gether fanciful,  association  with  the  persons 
who  may  have  been  their  readers  or  possessors. 
The  mind  of  a  thoughtful  looker  over  a  range 
of  volumes,  of  many  dales,  and  a  considerable 
proportion  of  them  old,  will  sometimes  be  led 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  19 

into  a  train  of  conjectural  questions  : — Who 
were  they  that,  in  various  times  and  places, 
have  had  these  in  their  possession  ?  Perhaps 
many  hands  have  turned  over  the  leaves,  many 
eyes  have  passed  along  the  lines.  With  what 
measure  of  intelligence,  and  of  approval  or  dis- 
sent, did  those  persons  respectively  follow  the 
train  of  thoughts  ?  How  many  of  them  were 
honestly  intent  on  hecoming  wise  by  what  they 
read  ?  How  many  sincere  prayers  were  ad- 
dressed by  them  to  the  Eternal  Wisdom  during 
the  perusal  ?  How  many  have  been  determin- 
ed, in  their  judgment  or  their  actions,  by  these 
books?  What  emotions,  temptations,  or  pain- 
ful occurrences,  may  have  interrupted  the  read- 
ing of  this  book,  or  of  that?  In  how  many  in- 
stances may  a  reader  have  shut  one  of  them,  to 
indulge  in  a  folly  or  a  vice,  of  which  that  very 
book  had  warned  him  to  beware?  Some  of 
these  volumes  are  histories  of  the  life  and  death 
of  good  men  ;  how  many  readers  may  have  pro- 
ceeded along  the  narrative,  approving  and  ad- 
miring ;  and,  envying  tiie  happy  termination  of 
the  course,  have  said,  "  Let  me  die  the  death 
of  the  righteous,"  and  nevertheless  have  pur- 
sued a  contrary  course,  and  come  to  a  melan- 
choly end  ?  May  not  some  one  of  these  books 
be  the  last  that  some  one  jierson  lived  to  read? 


20  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

Many  that  have  perused  them  are  dead  ;  each 
made  an  exit  in  a  manner  and  with  circum- 
stances of  its  own  ;  wliat  were  the  manner  and 
circumstances  in  each  instance  ?  It  was  a 
most  solemn  event  to  that  person  ;  hut  how  ig- 
norant concerning  it  am  I,  who  now  perhaps 
have  my  eye  on  the  book  which  he  read  the 
last !  What  a  power  of  association,  what  an 
element  of  intense  significance,  would  invest 
some  of  these  volumes,  if  I  could  have  a  mo- 
mentary vision  of  the  last  scene  of  a  number  of 
the  most  remarkable  of  their  former  readers ! 
/  Of  that,  the  books  can  tell  me  nothing  ;  but  let 
i  me  endeavor  to  bring  the  fact,  that  persons 
/'have  read  them  and  died,  to  bear  with  a  salu- 
I'^tary  influence  on  my  own  mind  while  I  am 
\  reading  any  of  them.  Let  me  cherish  that 
temper  of  spirit  which  is  sensible  of  intimations 
of  what  is  departed,  remaining  and  mingling 
with  what  is  present,  and  can  thus  perceive 
some  monitory  glimpses  of  even  the  unknown 
dead.  What  multiplied  traces  of  them,  on 
some  of  these  books,  are  perceptible  to  the  im- 
agination, which  beholds  successive  countenan- 
ces long  since  "  changed  and  sent  away,"  bent 
in  attention  over  the  pages!  And  the  minds 
which  looked  from  within  through  those  coun- 
tenances,  conversing  with  the  thoughts  of  other 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  21 

minds   perhaf)s   long   withdrawn,   even    at  that 
tjine,    from   among   men — what  and   where  are 
they  now  ?    Among  iUe   representations  of  the 
ohjecls  of  faith,  contained  in  any  of  these  works, 
what  pasisages  may  they  be  which  approach  the 
nearest  to  a  description  of  that  condition  of  ex- 
istence lo  which  those  readers  were  transferred, 
after  closing  the  book   for   the  Jast  time  ?     If  I 
could    have  a  sign,    when   I   liappen  to  fall  on 
some  page  dark  with  portentous  images  of  the 
evil  which  awaits  the  impious  and  wicked,  that 
a  certain  former  reader  carelessly  and  presump- 
tuously dared  the  experiment,  and  has  found  a 
reality    corresponding   to    those    menaces,    but 
more  tremendous:  or   a  sign,   when  I  am  read- 
ing sentences  animated  with  noble  and  delight- 
ful ideas  of  the  felicity  which  awaits  the  faith- 
ful, that  a  certain    preceding  reader,   (and  sup- 
pose him  signified  by  name,)   is  now  in  the  ex- 
perience of   a  fact,  true  in  principle  to  these 
anticipations,  but   far   transcending   in   degree, 
how   p>owerfully   should   I    be  arrested   at  those 
passages,  as  if  1  were  come  to  an  opening  from 
the  invisible  world,  through  which  I  could  hear 
"  sounds  of  lamentation  and  wo,"   or    songs  of 
triumph,   from  the  identical  beings  who,   at  a 
certain  hour  in  the  past,  looked  on  these  lines ! 
There  is  actually  a  person  telling  me,  that  he 
3» 


22  l.IVING  FOR  IMllOKTALrTY. 

looked  once  on  these  very  descriptions,  these 
emblems,  which  are  at  this  moment  before  my 
sight,  and  that  he,  the  same  person,  is,  at  this 
time  that  1  am  looking  at  them,  overwhelmed 
or  enraptured  by  the  reality.  But  I,  that  am 
come  after  him,  to  read  these  representations 
now,  do  I  solemnly  consider  that  I  am  myself 
making  my  election  of  the  yet  unseen  good  or 
evil,  and  that  very  soon  I  shall  leave  the  books 
in  my  turn,  and  arrive  at  the  consequence  ? 

Sometimes  the  conjectural  reference  to  the 
former  possessors  and  readers  of  books,  seems 
to  be  rendered  a  little  less  vague,  by  our  find- 
ing at  the  beginning  of  an  old  volume,  one  or 
more  names  written,  in  such  characters,  and 
perhaps  accompanied  with  such  dates,  that  we 
are  assured  those  persons  must  long  since  have 
done  with  all  books.  The  name  is  generally 
all  we  can  know  of  him  who  inserted  it ;  but 
we  can  thus  fix  on  an  individual  as  actually 
having  possessed  this  volume ;  and  perhaps 
there  are  here  and  there  certain  marks  which 
should  indicate  an  attentive  perusal.  What 
manner  of  person  was  he?  What  did  he 
think  of  the  sentiments,  the  passages,  which  I 
see  that  he  particularly  noticed  ?  If  there  be 
opinions  here  which  I  cannot  admit,  did  he  be- 
lieve them  ?    If  there  be  counsels  here  which  I 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  23 

deem  most  just  and  important,  did  they  effec- 
tually persuade  him  ?  Was  his  conscience,  at 
some  of  these  passages,  disturbed  or  calm  ?  In 
what  manner  did  he  converse  on  the  subjects 
with  his  associates  ?  What  were  the  most 
marked  features  of  his  character,  what  the 
most  considerable  circumstances  of  his  life,  in 
what  spirit  and  expectations  did  he  approach 
and  reach  its  close  ?  The  book  is  perhaps  such 
a  one  as  he  could  not  read,  without  being  co- 
gently admonished  that  he  was  going  to  his 
great  account  ;  he  went  to  that  account,  how 
did  he  meet  and  pass  through  it?  This  is  no 
vain  reverie.  He,  the  man  who  bore  and  wrote 
this  name,  did  go,  at  a  particular  time,  though 
unrecorded,  to  surrender  himself  to  his  Judge. 
But  I,  who  handle  the  book  that  was  his,  and 
observe  his  name,  and  am  thus  directing  my 
thoughts  into  the  dark  after  the  man,  I  also  am 
in  progress  toward  the  same  tribunal,  when  it 
will  be  proved,  to  my  joy  or  sorrow,  whether  I 
have  learned  true  wisdom  from  my  books,  and 
from  my  reflections  on  those  who  have  posses- 
sed and  read  them  before. 

But  it  may  be,  that  the  observer's  eye  fixes 
on  a  volume  whicii  instantly  recalls  to  his 
mind  a  person  whom  he  well  knew;  a  revered 
parent  perhaps,  or  a  valued  friend,  who  is  re- 


24  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

collected  to  have  approved  and  inculcated  the 
principles  of  llie  book,  or  perhaps  to  have  given 
it  to  the  person  who  is  now  looking  at  it,  as  a 
token  of  regard,  or  an  inoffensive  expedient  for 
drawing  attention  to  an  important  subject.  He 
may  have  the  image  of  that  relative  or  friend, 
as  in  the  employment  of  reading  that  volume,  or 
in  the  act  of  presenting  it  to  him.  This  may 
awaken  a  train  of  remembrances  leading  away 
from  any  relation  to  the  book,  and  possibly  of 
salutary  tendency  ;  but  also,  such  an  associa- 
tion with  the  book  may  have  an  effect,  whenr 
ever  he  shall  consult  it,  as  if  it  were  the  de- 
parted friend,  still  more  than  the  author,  that 
uttered  the  sentiments.  The  author  spoke  to 
any  one  indifferently,  to  no  one  in  particular ; 
but  the  sentiments  seem  to  be  specially  applied 
to  we,  when  they  come  in  this  connexion  with 
the  memory  of  one  who  was  my  friend.  Thus 
he  would  have  spoken  to  me,  thus,  in  effect,  he 
does  speak  to  me,  while  I  think  of  him  as  hav- 
ing read  the  book,  and  regarded  it  as  partic- 
ularly adapted  to  me  ;  or  seem  to  behold  him, 
as  when  reading  it  in  my  hearing,  and  some- 
times looking  off  from  the  page  to  make  a  gen- 
tle enforcement  of  the  instruction.  He  would 
have  been  happy  to  anticipate  that,  whenever  I 
might  look  into  it,  my  remembrance  of  him 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  25 

would   infuse  a   more  touching  significance,   a 
more    applying    principal,    into    its    important 
sentiments  ;  thus  retainincr  him,  thouch  invisi- 
bly,  and  without  his  actual  presence,  in  the  ex- 
ercise of  a  bene^cent  influence.     But  indeed  I 
can,   at   some   moments,   indulge   my    mind   to 
imagine   something   more  than  this  mere  ideal 
intervention  to  reinforce  the  impression  of  truth 
upon    me ;    insomuch   that,   supposing   it   were 
permitted  to  receive  intimations  from  those  who 
have  left  the  world,  it  will  seem  to  me  possible 
that  I   might,  when   looking  into  some  parts  of 
that  book,  in  a  solitary  hour  of  night,  perceive 
myself  to  be  once  more  the  object  of  his  atten- 
tion, signified  by  a  mysterious  whisper  from  no 
visible  form ;  or  by  a  momentary  preternatural 
luminousness  pervading  the  lines,   to  intimate 
that  a  friendly  intelligence,  that  does  not  forget 
me,  would   still  and   again   enforce  on  my  con- 
science the  dictates  of  piety  and  wisdom  which 
I  am  reading.     And   shall   it  be  as  nothing  to 
me,  for  effectual  impression,  that  both  my  mem- 
ory recalls  the  friend  as  when  living,  in  aid  of 
these  instructions,   and    that    my    imagination, 
without   any   discord    with    my   reason,    appre- 
hends him,  when    now  under  a  mightier  mani- 
festation of  truth,  as  still  animated  with  a  spirit 
which  would,   if  that  were  consistent   with  the 


26  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

laws  of  the  higher  economy,  convey  to  me  yet 
again  the  same  testimony  and  injunctions?  Is 
all  influential  relation  dissolved  by  the  with- 
drawment  from  mortal  intercourse  ;  so  that  let 
my  friends  die,  and  I  am  as  loose  from  their 
hold  upon  me  as  if  they  had  ceased  to  exist,  or 
even  never  had  existed. 


CHAPTER   III. 

PRINCIPLES     OF     AN    INFIDEL     CONTRASTED     WITH 
THOSE    OF    A   BELIEVER    IN    CHRISTIANITY. 

In  the  slight  exemplification  of  the  manner 
in  which  the  sight  of  an  assemblafje  of  books 
may  awaken  serious  reflection,  by  recalling  to 
our  view  the  persons  who  are  imagined  or 
known  to  have  possessed  or  read  them,  we  are 
supposing  the  association  confined  to  the  par- 
ticular volumes  on  the  spot.  Any  attempt  at 
widening  the  scope  of  reflection,  toward  the 
whole  extent  of  all  the  editions  and  copies  of 
each  book,  would  confuse  and  dissipate  the 
meditation   in  a  multiplicity  inconceivable  and 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITV.  27 

endless.     Think  of  any  one  book  that  has  been 
long  and  extensively  circulated  ; — suppose  Dod- 
dridge's Rise  and    Progress  of  Religion   in  the 
Soul.     The    immense    number   of   impressions 
have  engaged    the   attention,   less   or    more,  of 
hundreds    of  thousands   of  persons.     Each    of 
those  copies  has  had  its  own  particular  destina- 
tion, and  many   of  them   have,  doubtless,  been 
attended  with  remarkable  circumstances,  thougii 
to  us  unknown.      If  some  of  the  most  memora- 
ble could  be  brought  to  our  knowledge,  in  con- 
nexion   with   the    individual   and    still    existinar 
copies  which  they  befell,  what  an  interest  would 
be  attached   to   those   books,  bearing   such  me- 
morials of  the  past !    Imagine  by  what  a  strange 
diversity   of  persons,   as   to  disposition,  mental 
endowment,  conduct,  age  ;   in  what  a  variety  of 
situations,    under   how  many   peculiar  conjunc- 
tures of  occurrence  ;  and   with  what  dissimilar 
impressions  and  results,  the  book  has  been  pe- 
rused or  noticed  !     It   is  striking,   to   a   degree 
even    awful,  to  reflect   what  such   a   book  must 
have  done  ;  to  how  many  it  may  have  imparted 
thoughts    new    and   aflfecting,  and   which  noth- 
ing could  expel  ;   how   many  it   may  have  been 
made  the   means  of  leading  into   a  happy  life, 
and  to  a  happy  end  ;  how  many  it  has  arrested, 
disturbed,   and  warned,  whom  it  could  not  per- 


28  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

suade  ;  of  how  many   it  has  aggravated  the  re- 
sponsibility,  more  than  influenced  the  conduct. 
So  great  a  number  and  diversity  of  accountable 
beings,  unknown,   for   the   most  part,    to   one 
another,  scattered  here   and   there,  over  more 
than  one  country,  and  over  a  space  of  time  ap- 
proaching to   a  century,  have  come  into  some 
certain    relation   to    this    one    book  !     Among 
them,  many  a  single  instance  might,  if  the  case 
could  be   fully   brought  to  our  knowledge,  ex- 
hibit a  remarkable  history  of  a  train  of  thought 
and  emotion,  of  determination  and  practical  re- 
sult; possibly  including  singular  incidents,  op- 
portune and  auspicious,  or  of  disastrous  influ- 
ence.     And    who   shall   presume   to    cast    any 
thought   toward  an   assignable  duration  of  the 
effect  resulting  to  so  many  persons,  from  their 
attention  having  fallen  on  this  work,  when  that 
effect  is  gone,  or   is  to  go,  into  the  interests  of 
eternity  1    Let  the  idea  of  its  unknown  prolon- 
gation be  combined  with  that  of  the  number  of 
beings  experiencing  it,  and  it  would  be  no  ex- 
travagant fantasy,  to  believe,  that  the  pious  au- 
thor may  find  it  one  of  the  amazements  of  his 
future  enlarging  knowledge,  to  have  a  manifes- 
tation  in   some   way   unfolding  itself  to  him,  of 
even  a  minor  part  of  the  consequences  of  what 
he  wrote. 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  29 

It  is  but  a  diminutive  portion  of  what  must 
have  happened  to  the  book,  in  relation  to  its 
former  readers,  and  transient  inspectors,  that 
we  can  brincj  wjtliin  the  view  of  our  mind,  with 
any  distinctness  of  apprehension.  But  it  is 
easy  to  represent  to  ourselves  a  few  instances 
of  so  general  a  description,  that  it  must  be  cer- 
tain there  have  been  many  such.  And  we  may 
perliaps  be  indulged  in  tlie  hope  of  inducing 
somewhat  of  a  serious  and  favorable  predispo- 
sition in  some  one  or  other,  whose  attention 
may  hereafter  be  drawn  to  tlie  work,  by  em- 
ploying the  remainder  of  this  Essay  in  specify- 
ing a  few  exemplifications  of  the  manner  of  re- 
ception and  attention,  which  the  book  may  be 
imagined  to  have  found,  witii  persons  of  several 
supposed  characters  of  mind  ;  and  suggesting, 
in  each  case,  some  of  the  appropriate  consider- 
ations. We  would  wish  to  fall  on  such  ques- 
tions, persuasives,  or  expostulations,  as  might 
have  been  pertinently  addressed,  and  possibly 
in  some  instances  were  addressed  to  the  per- 
sons so  described,  bv  a  sensible  relisiious 
friend  ;  whose  character  we  may  be  allowed  to 
personate,  in  representing  how  his  office  might 
be  performed. 

It  would  be  of  little  use  to  expatiate  on  the 
supposition,  (not  an  improbable  one,)  that  such 
4 


30  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

a   book   may   casually,   at  one  time  or  another, 
have  fallen  under  the   transient  notice  of  a  de- 
cided  unbeliever   in  revealed  religion  ;  an  un- 
believer,  therefore,   in   effect,   in  religion  alto- 
gether.    We  can  easily  conceive  the  supercil- 
ious air,  and  the  note   of  scorn,  at  the  sight  of 
what  cost  the  excellent  author  so  much  earnest 
labor,   with   the  most  pure  and  benevolent  in- 
tention,  and    has  occupied   so   many  thousand 
hours  of  the  grave  attention  of  readers  ;  what 
has    been    the    means    of    awakening    many 
thoughtless    spirits  to    seriousness ;    what  has, 
in  not  a  few  instances,  opportunely    occurred 
to  decide  a  mind  wavering  in  the  most  momen- 
tous of  all    practical  questions  ;  and   what  has 
by  many  been  gratefully  recollected,   near  the 
close  of  life,   as   having  greatly   contributed  to 
the  cause  of  its  closing  well.     He  could  not  be 
unapprized  of  such  things  belonging  to  its  his- 
tory, unless  we  suppose   him    more   ignorant  of 
the  extension  and  effect  of  what  may  be  called 
our  religious  literature,  than  is  quite  consistent 
with    the    character   of  a   well-informed    man, 
which  we  may   be  sure   he  claimed.     But  we 
may  believe,  that  the  knowledge  of  this  did  not 
at  all  modify  the  tone  of  contempt,  in  which  he 
repeated  the  title  of  the  book,  to  give  it  a  new 
turn  :  "  Rise  and  Progress  of — delusion,  super- 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY,  31 

stition,  nonsonse  !  Rise  of  an  isrnis  fatnus, 
from  fernienliiior  ignorance,  to  orlimiTier  and 
ran»l)le  in  a  progress  to  exiinciion  and  noth- 
ing!" And  he  was  elated  in  the  self-compla- 
cency of  being  so  mucli  more  wise  and  fortu- 
nate than  all  such  writers,  and  all  their  believ- 
ing readers. 

But  icas  it  a  self-complacency  quite  entire 
and  unmingled,  or  which  could  be  maintained 
in  steady  uniform  tenor,  through  the  diversity 
of  circumstances,  and  the  varying  moods  of  the 
mind  ?  Let  us  suppose  that,  soon  after  his  in- 
dulging this  contempt  of  the  book  and  its  sub- 
ject, some  grievous  occurrence,  or  even  the 
mere  unexplained  fluctuation  of  feeling,  re- 
duced him  for  a  while  to  a  somewhat  reflective 
or  gloomy  temper  ;  and  that  just  then  one  of 
his  own  fraternity  turned  in  to  see  him,  and 
happened  to  catch  sight  of  the  same  book, — if 
indeed  it  be  an  admissible  supposition,  that  it 
could  have  been  suffered  to  remain  any  where 
near  him.  We  may  imagine  the  visitant  to  re- 
gard the  book  with  the  same  disposition  as  his 
friend  ;  and  let  it  be  supposed,  that  he  went 
into  a  strain  of  congratulation  something  like 
the  following  :  What  a  noble  privilege  of  eleva- 
tion we  enjoy  over  those  silly  dupes  of  impos- 
ture   and    superstition,    the    authors  of    these 


32  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

works,   (such  of  them  as  really  think  as  they 
write,)   and    their  disciples,  who   gravely   and 
honestly    believe   what  they   read.      To   think 
what  a  mighty  concern  these  simple  people  are 
always  making  of  their   souls,   talking  of  their 
spiritual  nature,  their  immortal  principle,  their 
infinite  value  !     Whereas  we,  by  virtue  of  rea- 
son disenchanted  and    illuminated,   could   tell 
them  that  this  soul,  so   fondly  idolized,  so  lu- 
dicrously extolled,  is  nothing  more  than  an  ac- 
cident of  corporeal  organization,  and  necessa- 
rily perishes  with  the  material  frame — with  the 
body,  as  they  call   it  in   contradistinction,  and 
speak  of  it  in  terms  of  comparative  contempt, 
as   if  they  possessed   something   incomparably 
more  noble.     They  are  for  ever,  too,  referring 
to   a   Supreme  Being,   with   whom   they  fancy 
they  are  standing  in  some  mysterious  and  sub- 
lime relation.     They  talk  of  his  favor,  his  prov- 
idence, his  grace  ;  and   actually   imagine  they 
can  hold  a  direct  communication  with  him,  in- 
dulging a  fantastic  notion  of  some  special  good 
to  be  obtained  from   him   by  importunate  solici- 
tation.    What  an  inflation  of  vanity  !  to  fancy 
that  such  a  being  (if  there  be  such  a  one)  must 
be  continually  thinking  of  fAem;  that  he  should 
care   about  their  dispositions   and   deportment 
toward  him ;    and   that   they   can    attract   his 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  33 

special  attention,  and  constrain  him  to  give  pe- 
culiar tokens  of  his  favor.  And  what  a  wretch- 
ed bondage  of  superstition,  to  be,  at  every  step, 
in  every  practical  question,  with  respect  to 
every  inclination  and  emotion,  and  with  the 
sacrifice  of  whatever  their  own  immediate  in- 
terest may  plead,  under  the  constraint  of  an 
imaginary  obligation  to  consult  the  will  of  some 
invisible  and  unknown  authority  !  Our  privi- 
lege of  sounder  reason  reduces  and  restores  us 
to  ourselves,  from  all  such  visionary  amplitude 
of  relations;  and  exempts  us  from  all  the  vain 
solicitudes  and  distractions  of  an  unremitting 
endeavor  to  live  in  consistency  with  them.  It 
is  enough  that  we  hold  our  transient  being  un- 
der certain  laws  of  nature,  fixed  in  the  system 
of  the  world,  to  which  it  is  more  easy  to  sub- 
mit, than  to  the  will  and  continual  interference 
of  a  formal  and  foreign  authority.  Our  subjec- 
tion to  these  laws  we  cannot  help,  but  are  hap- 
py to  take  our  destiny  under  it,  with  the  free 
allowance  to  follow  our  own  inclinations  as  far 
as  we  can.  If  there  be  an  Almighty  Power, 
we  may  well  believe  he  has  other  afTairs  to 
mind,  than  that  of  interfering  with  us  while  we 
are  minding  our  own. 

It  is  true,  these  deluded  people  are  persuaded 
that  he  has  made  an  express  communication  to 
4* 


34  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

men,  declaring  the  relations  in  which  they 
stand,  and  announcing  his  will.  And  indeed 
it  mast  be  confessed  to  be  quite  miraculous, 
that  so  many  things  concur  to  make  a  sem- 
blance of  evidence  that  there  has  been  such  a 
communication.  But  let  us  not  trouble  our- 
selves about  the  matter  :  it  is  absurd  to  im- 
agine there  can  have  been  any  such  anomaly  in 
the  course  of  things,  any  such  arbitrary  substi- 
tution for  the  dictates  of  our  reason  :  our  li- 
cense of  acting  as  we  desire,  would  be  surren- 
dered in  believing  it ;  and  we  will  not  be- 
lieve it. 

To  crown  the  whole  set  of  delusions  which 
these  people  call  their  faith,  they  are  actually 
persuaded  that  there  remains  for  men  a  con- 
scious existence  after  death  ;  a  perpetual  ex- 
istence, they  say,  in  a  state  bearing  a  retribu- 
tive relation  to  what  they  shall  have  been  in 
this  life.  And  they  are  elated  with  the  hope, 
and  vehemently  stimulated  to  exertions  for  the 
attainment  of  an  eternal  felicity.  A  magnifi- 
cent dream,  certainly,  for  those  who  can  lay 
their  sober  senses  aside,  to  admit  the  illusion. 
Nor  can  we  deny,  that,  through  the  medium  of 
such  a  notion,  these  enthusiasts  have  a  view  of 
death  vastly  different  from  ours,  and  feel  an 
augmented  interest  in  their  existence,  as  they 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  35 

approach  near  the  end  of  what  they  are  calling 
its  introductory  stage.     To  hear  them  talk,  one 
would  think   they   had   received  messengers  or 
visions  from  another  world,  to  inform  them  of  a 
splendid   allotment  and  reception   already  pre- 
pared for  them  there,  and  of  friends  impatient 
for  their  arrival.     And   it  is   a  notorious  fact, 
that,  on   the  strength  of  such  a  presumption, 
great  numbers  of  the  devotees  to  this  faith  have 
resigned  their  life  with   exultation,  not  a  few  of 
them  under  tortures   inflicted   for  their  fidelity 
to  this  their   superstition.     Well,   the  delusion 
and  the  existence  broke  up  together.     And  for 
the  present  race  of  pious  fools,  let  them  expend 
their  cares,  their  passions,  their  life,  their  very 
souls,   upon  their  adored  fallacy  ;  while  we,  on 
a  higher  ground,  can   be   amused   to  see  them 
led  on  by  a  phantom,  which  ere  long  will  mock 
at  their  sudden   fall,  one    after    another,    into 
nothing.     We  envy  them  not  the  ambitious  as- 
pirings which  cheat  them  out  of  the  enjoyment 
of  this  world,  never,   assuredly,   to  repay  them 
in  another.     If  we  lose  any  thing  worth  calling 
pleasure,  in  being  destitute  of  that  hope  which 
flatters  them   with  images  of  a  happy  futurity, 
we  have  an  ample  compensation  in  the  riddance 
of  that  fear  which  visits  even  some  of  them,  in 
their  gloomy  moments,  with  alarms  of  a  miser- 


36  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

able  one.  Besides,  a  happiness  of  such  a  na- 
ture as  they  dream  of,  would  be  little  congenial 
with  the  inclinations  which  actuate  us,  and 
which  we  have  neither  power  nor  desire  to 
alter.  Our  wisdom  is,  to  make  the  most  that 
we  can,  in  the  indulgence  of  these  inclinations, 
of  the  world  that  we  are  in.  We  hope  in  good 
fortune,  that  our  life  may  be  long  and  prosper- 
ous ;  and  if  any  thing  of  a  sombre  hue  should 
threaten  to  come  over  its  latter  stages,  through 
infirmities  and  the  evident  approach  of  its  ter- 
mination, we  shall  have  the  resource  of  philoso- 
phy and  fate  ;  and  may  find  some  remaining 
amusements  that  will  please  and  divert  us  to 
the  last.  And  when,  at  length,  we  are  forced 
out  of  the  world  and  existence,  we  shall  have 
no  consciousness  of  our  loss.  How  insensible, 
happily  for  us,  we,  or  rather  the  dust  that  once 
composed  us,  will  be,  while  thousands  of  de- 
luded creatures  will  be  occupied  with  such  books 
as  the  Rise  and  Progress  of  Religion  in  the 
Soul,  and  with  the  gravest  earnestness  afflicting 
themselves  with  a  superstitious  discipline  for 
the  attainment  of  an  imaginary  heaven,  with 
the  frequent  intrusion  of  the  dread  of  an  equally 
fictitious  hell. 

Now,  could  the  supposed    speaker,  without 
plainly   belying  the  matter,  have  made  out  the 


LIVING  FOR  IMMOUTALITY.  37 

case  for  congratulation    in   terms   much  more 
gratifying  than  these?    But  we  may  reasonably 
doubt  wliether  a  strain  like  tbis,  expressed  in  a 
confident   tone   of  superior  wisdom,  but  so  pal- 
pably betraying,   with    inadvertent  honesty,  the 
sordid  and  disconsolate  character  and  adjuncts 
of  the  vaunted   privilege,  would   be  listened  to 
with  complacency,   during  the  depressed  mood 
ofthescorner  of  the   religious   book,  religious 
persons,  and  religion  itself.     We  can  imagine 
him  saying.  Pray  suspend  your  song  of  triumph 
and  disdain  ;  it  has  to  me  a  raven  sound.     Are 
we,  then,  in   the   very  elation  of  our  pride,  in 
plain  fact  thus  prostrate  on   the  earth  ?    Must 
we  confess,  that  we  hold  our  advantage  of  rea- 
son  disabused,   of  stronger   and    freer    intelli- 
gence, at  the  cost  of  admitting  so  humiliating 
an  estimate  of  our  being  and  destiny?    Really, 
we  are  in  danger  of  giving  these  people  that  we 
despise,  occasion   to   indulge   contempt  or  pity 
in  their  turn.     I  could  almost  wish  that  I  were 
under  the  same  delusion. 

It  would  have  contributed  little  to  recover 
him  from  tbis  recoil  of  feeling,  if,  just  about  the 
same  time,  an  intellicrent  religious  man  had 
fallen  into  his  company,  had  happened  to  learn 
in  what  manner  the  serious  book  and  its  subject 
had  been  disposed  of,  and  had  thrown  in  a  few 


38  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

of  his  suggestions,  to  re-inspirit  the  shrinking 
arrogance  of  irreligion. — I  am  rather  sorry,  (we 
may  suppose  him  to  say,)  that  a  book  like  that, 
written  with  the  most  simple  and  benevolent 
desire  to  do  good,  by  a  man  who  had  deeply 
studied  his  subject,  should  have  been  the  ob- 
ject of  a  contempt  which  I  should  have  thought 
full  as  justly  bestowed  on  some  of  those  produc- 
tions, of  frivolous  quality,  or  dishonest  inten- 
tion, which  I  believe  are  the  objects  of  your 
favor.  However,  a  work  which  has  engaged 
the  most  serious  attention,  and  powerfully  ope- 
rated on  the  character  of  multitudes,  and  will 
do  so  of  multitudes  more,  can  afford  to  incur 
your  passing  glance  and  expressions  of  disdain. 
And  the  subject  of  the  book,  religion,  can 
afford  it  too — that  religion,  which  has  sustained 
the  severest  examination,  and  secured  the  con- 
viction, and  animated  the  virtues  in  life,  and 
hopes  in  death,  of  many  of  the  strongest,  no- 
blest minds,  who  have  bequeathed  to  its  glory 
all  that  was  illustrious  in  humanity.  So  hon- 
ored, what  can  it  lose,  think  you,  of  its  dignity 
and  venerableness,  by  the  refusal  of  your  hom- 
age? It  can,  I  repeat,  afford  that  you  should 
be  its  rejecters  and  contemners,  and  should 
lend  all  the  credit  of  wisdom  and  virtues  such 
as  vours,  to  the  cause  which  is  so  fierce  to  ex- 


LIV[NG  FOR  IMMUUTALITY.  39 

plode  it.  With  perfect  impunity  to  its  honors, 
religion  can  have  you  going  about  proclaiming, 
that  you  have  received  a  light  by  which  it  is 
exposed  as  a  delusion  and  imposture, — a  light 
of  the  same  kind,  (if  so  grave  a  topic  would  al- 
low so  ludicrous  an  allusion,)  as  that  which 
was  obtained  where  the  satirist  reports  to  have 
seen  the  wise  men  at  work  to  extract  sunbeams 
from  cucumbers.  But  when,  in  this  s^elf-assur- 
ance  of  rectified  understandinor,  you  are  indul^- 
ing  your  contempt  of  religion,  does  the  thought 
never  strike  you,  what  a  very  curious  chance  it 
was  that  this  brighter  illunjinaliun,  under  which 
the  old  imposture  vanishes,  should  fall  exactly 
on  you  7  For,  was  your  mind  of  an  order,  or 
in  a  disposition,  the  most  likely  to  attract  the 
latent  element  of  truth  to  combine  with  it,  and 
disperse  the  fog?  Was  yours  the  spirit  to  con- 
template, with  comprehensive  survey,  in  pure 
serenity  of  temper,  the  theory  of  religion?  If 
from  moral  causes  you  needed  and  wished  that 
religion  should  not  be  true,  was  that  the  secu- 
rity for  impartial  inquiry,  ai]d  undeceptive  con- 
clusions? If  you  experienced  what  you  thought 
injustice,  (or  I  will  suppose  it  really  such,)  from 
persons  of  religious  profession,  and  your  re- 
sentment against  them  grew  into  re-action 
against    religion    itself,    was    that    the    proper 


40  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

mood  for  examining  its  authority  ?  If  you  had 
yourself  made  pretensions  to  piety,  but,  forfeit- 
ing your  Ciiristian  character  by  misconduct, 
were  censured  or  disowned  by  a  religious  com- 
munity with  which  you  had  been  connected, 
and  then  called  on  infidelity  to  assist  your  re- 
venge, was  that  a  benign  conjunction  under 
which  to  commence  your  new  intellectual  en- 
terprise ?  And  if,  to  decide  your  hesitation, 
expel  your  yet  lingering  fears,  and  promote 
your  progress,  you  betook  yourself  to  the  com- 
panionship, through  the  attraction  of  their  irre- 
ligion,  of  men  whom  you  knew  to  be  unprinci- 
pled and  profligate,  and  perhaps  ignorant  too, 
was  that  the  school  in  which  you  can  feel  pride 
to  have  been  learners?  Such  things  recollect- 
ed, however,  may  be  quite  compatible  with  self- 
complacency,  in  persons  of  your  principles ; 
but  you  may  believe  that  religion  will  suffer  no 
default  of  its  honors,  by  not  having  such  as 
you  for  adherents. 

I  allow  that  you  have  your  advantages  in  its 
rejection.  Indeed,  why  should  I  deny  this 
very  thing  to  be  one — that  you  can  think  of 
such  a  mode  of  deliverance  from  it,. and  not  be 
stifled  with  shame?  You  have  the  still  greater 
privilege  of  being  set  loose  from  the  constraint 
of  many   obligations   and   prohibitions.      You 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  41 

**  are  a  cliartered  (.NtZ/'-chartered)  libertine," 
and  can  give  yourself  freely  away  to  pleasures, 
amusements,  or  ambition.  And  you  boast  that 
you  have  the  high  advantage  of  being  intent  on 
realities^  while  the  captives  of  religion,  you  say, 
dragged  or  threatened  oflf  from  a  thousand  at- 
tractive objects  and  opportunities,  are  consum- 
ing their  spirits  and  life  on  mere  ideas,  on  the 
imaginations  of  some  intangible,  unseen,  and 
reversionary  good.  But  suspend,  for  a  mo- 
ment, your  boast  about  this  reality  of  the  mate- 
rials of  your  happiness.  Say,  whether  it  be  not 
a  fact  that  you  are  in  no  otlier  possession  of 
your  favorite  objects,  than  merely  in  idea,  dur- 
ing the  far  greater  proportion  of  your  time. 
Your  thinking  of  them,  wishing  for  them,  im- 
agining how  delightful  would  be  the  possession 
of  them;  contriving  how  to  attain  them,  feel- 
ing how  wretched  and  impatient  you  are  in  not 
having  them  yet,  fretting  at  the  obstacles,  ra- 
ging at  your  disappointments ;  again  eagerly 
anticipating  them,  as  now  nearly  within  your 
reach,  being  mortified  at  a  new  delay,  thrown 
in  this  chilling  moment  on  the  reflection  what 
the  pursuit  has  already  cost  you,  and  what  it 
may  cost  you  still  ;  alarmed,  perhaps,  at  what 
the  very  success  may  cost  you,  in  its  possible 
or  certain  consequences — what  kind  of  reality 
5 


42  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

is  all  this?  Nearly  the  same  as  that  of  a  fair 
garden  of  fruit  to  a  man  looking  at  it  or  at- 
tempting it  across  a  treacherous  moat,  a  steep 
slippery  bank,  and  an  almost  impenetrable 
fence  of  thorns.  Is  this  the  reality  which  will 
bear  you  out  in  your  exultation  over  those  who 
are  wasting,  you  say,  their  energy  on  objects 
which  exist  to  them  only  in  idea  ? 

But  you  do  sometimes  obtain  your  objects, 
and  can  say  you  now  possess  the  thing  itself; 
which  the  devotees  to  religion,  you  say,  never 
can,  since  that  which  they  are  peculiarly  to  as- 
pire after,  is  confessedly  something  not  belong- 
ing to  this  world.  And  you  account  it  the 
special  advantage  which  you  have  over  them, 
that  it  is  through  the  rejection  of  the  truth  and 
authority  of  religion  that  you  are  empowered  to 
make  a  larger  appropriation  of  what  the  real 
world  contains  and  offers.  Had  I  remained 
servile  to  that  domination,  you  will  exclaim, 
what  an  interdict  should  I  have  met,  whichever 
way  I  turned  1  This  object  I  must  not  have 
put  forth  my  hand  toward  at  all ;  this  other  I 
must  beware  of  following  beyond  a  certain 
length.  If,  thus  enclosed  round  with  a  restric- 
tion from  so  many  desirable  things,  I  could 
soar  aloft,  that  were  well.  I  had  leave  to 
mount  up  through  the  sky,  to  walk  ideally  in  a 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  43 

paradise,  holdifig  converse  willi  angels,  and  fix- 
ing, by  anlicipalion,  on  a  mansion  in  new  Je- 
rusalem. But  I  was  for  no  such  elherial  alti- 
tudes, and  impalpable  superfine  felicities.  I 
wanted  the  substantial  good  of  this  earth  ; 
wanted  some  things  of  a  kind,  others  in  a  meas- 
ure, and  many  on  terms,  which  religion  for- 
bade. I  have  disowned  the  usurped  authority, 
have  burst  through  the  restricting  circle  ;  and 
now,  see  me  here  in  possession  or  command  of 
things  which  need  no  faith  to  give  them  sub- 
stance, and  which  are  not  the  less  agreeable 
for  being  a  little  seasoned  with  what  your  spir- 
itual people  call  sin. 

But  these  realities,  when  actually  possessed, 
do  they  never  let  in  upon  you  a  mortifying  con- 
viction, that  you  have  been  nevertheless  the 
dupe  of  illusion  ?  As  a  purveyor  to  your  sen- 
ses, or  as  a  gay  spirit,  or  as  a  pertinacious  as- 
pirer  to  some  pitch  of  pre-eminence  above  your 
fellow  mortals  in  wealth,  or  display,  or  power, 
you  may,  in  some  instance  and  measure,  have 
succeeded  in  convertincr  the  mere  images  into 
the  very  substance  ;  exulting,  I  may  suppose, 
to  think  how  much  you  owed  in  this  achieve- 
ment to  your  emancipation  from  all  religious 
belief;  but  recollect,  how  long  did  the  posses- 
sion preclude  all   painful  sense  of  deficiency  ? 


44  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

Did  no  invadinor  dissatisfaction  turn  your  mind 
to  bitterness  of  reflection  on  the  previous  en- 
chantment of  imagination,  which  had  so  long 
prompted  you  on  with  assurances  of  complete 
delight?  Might  you  never  have  been  over- 
heard to  murmur,  "  What  inanity  in  all  these 
things  !"  and  to  curse  your  destiny,  as  secretly 
but  an  accomplice  of  religion,  to  punish  and 
plague  you  for  its  rejection  ? 

Thus,  then,  if  you  bring  to  account  the  en- 
tire quantity  of  the  busy  occupation  of  your 
faculties  about  that  which  you  pursue  as  your 
supreme  good,  and  observe  that  the  proportion 
of  perhaps  nineteen  parts  in  twenty  of  all  this 
is  not  the  interest  of  actual  possession,  and 
then  make  the  deduction  for  the  feelings  of  dis- 
appointment and  chagrin  incident  to  the  pos- 
session obtained,  (and  which  throw  you  back 
again  into  reflection  and  imagination,  that  is, 
into  mere  ideas,  and  those  of  a  most  irksome 
kind,)  it  will  appear  that  you  have  an  extreme- 
ly narrow  ground  for  your  boast  of  being  a  man 
for  the  realities  of  good,  in  contrast  with  the 
believer  in  religion,  who,  you  say,  subsists  on 
mere  images,  gleams,  and  shadows.  Would 
your  experience  thus  far  warrant  you  to  com- 
pute, that  all  the  moments  of  full  satisfaction 
added  together  would   amount  to  as  much  as 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  46 

one  year  in  a  long  life?  A  splendid  triumph, 
for  a  man  who  is  blessing  his  superior  reason 
and  good  fortune,  that  he  is  not  cheated  out  of 
what  is  real  and  substantial,  to  waste  his  being 
on  the  phantasms  of  Christian  faith  !  So  much 
it  is  that  you  can  gain  by  availing  yourself, 
to  the  utmost  extent  that  you  dare  under  the 
limitations  imposed  by  the  constitution  of  na- 
ture and  society,  of  the  license  conferred  by 
your  infidelity.  And  so  high  is  your  advan- 
tage over  those  who,  while  indulging  the  hope 
of  an  immortal  happiness,  can  make  more  than 
you  can  of  this  world  itself,  under  the  sanction 
of  Christian  principles  in  their  selection  and 
pursuit. 

But,  while  forced  to  admit  so  humiliating  a 
representation,  you  will,  perhaps,  in  the  re- 
action of  pride,  say,  that  your  being  in  posses- 
session  of  truths  is  itself  alone  a  noble  emi- 
nence that  you  have  attained  above  the  subjects 
of  an  imposture,  the  deluded  believers  in  a 
revelation.  Your  spirit  has  risen  up  in  its 
strength,  and  defied  the  antiquated  superstition 
to  lay  you  under  its  spell ;  it  has  gone  forth  in 
its  might,  and  exterminated  from  your  field  of 
view  the  crowd  of  spectres  and  chimeras.  But 
you  must  allow  me  to  doubt,  whether  you  re- 
ally feel  in  this  matter  all  the  confident  assur- 
5* 


46  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

ance  which  you  pretend.  I  suspect  there  are 
times  when  you  dare  not  look  out  over  that 
field,  for  fear  of  seeing  the  portentous  shapes 
there  again ;  and  even  that  they  sometimes 
come  close  to  present  a  ghastly  visage  to  you 
through  the  very  windows  of  your  strong  hold. 
I  have  observed  in  men  of  your  class,  that  they 
often  appear  to  regard  the  arrayed  evidences  of 
revealed  religion,  not  with  the  simple  aversion 
which  may  be  felt  for  error  and  deception,  but 
with  that  kind  of  repugnance  which  betrays  a 
recognition  of  adverse  power.  Say  what  pen- 
ance you  would  not  rather  undergo,  or  of 
which  of  your  most  favorite  pleasures  (even  of 
those  in  which  you  verify  your  privilege  of 
exemption  from  the  authority  of  religion)  you 
would  not  rather  deny  yourself,  for  a  consider- 
able time,  than  be  obliged  to  study  deliberately, 
in  sober  retirement,  a  few  of  the  works  most 
distinguished  for  strength  of  argument  in  de- 
fence of  Christianity  ;  though  this,  it  might  be 
presumed,  should  be  a  fair  expedient  for  con- 
firming your  satisfaction  ?  I  know  that  some 
of  your  class,  (and  perhaps  your  conscience 
testifies  as  to  one,)  have  no  resource  for  es- 
caping from  their  disquietude,  but  in  diverting 
their  attention  completely  from  the  subject,  by 
throwing  themselves  into  the  whirl  of  amuse- 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  47 

ment,  into  business,  conviviality,  or  intemper- 
ance. But  it  is  not  the  hero's  part  to  affect  to 
be  occupied  with  necessary  employments,  or  to 
hide  himself  in  a  throng  of  masks  and  revellers, 
when  he  descries  the  antagonist  approaching 
to  challenge  him. 

But  it  may  happen,  that  the  subject,  in  its 
menacing  aspect,  will  present  itself  to  you  under 
circumstances  which  preclude  this  escape. 
And  you  cannot  be  unapprized  what  a  striking 
difference,  in  spirit  and  deportment,  we  have 
sometimes  had  an  occasion  of  observing,  be- 
tween one  of  your  tribe,  and  a  man  whose  mor-  / 
al  strength  was  in  the  belief  and  power  of  re- 
vealed religion,  when  overtaken  by  some  ca- 
lamity, or  attacked  by  a  dangerous  distemper. 
Nor  can  you  have  failed  to  hear  of  examples  in 
which  that  difference  has  become  quite  prodig- 
ious, when  the  parties  have  sensibly  approach- 
ed their  last  hour.  You  cannot  have  forgotten 
instances  among  those  now  lost  to  your  frater- 
nity, of  some  whose  closing  life  presented  a 
direful  scene  ;  who  could  maintain  no  longer 
either  their  disbelief  or  their  courage  ;  who 
poured  forth  execrations  on  their  principles, 
and  on  those  from  whom  they  had  learned 
them  ;  called  out  on  pious  relatives,  absent  or 
even  dead  ;  implored  the  intercession  of  Chris- 
tian friends,  as  if,   ridiculed  so  often    before  for 


48  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

their  faith,  they  were  now  believed  to  have 
power  to  propitiate  insuUed  Heaven ;  adjured 
and  dismayed  their  associates  in  irreligion,  if 
any  of  them  had  friendship  or  hardiiiood  enough 
to  stay  by  them,  in  impotence  to  console  them  ; 
were  agonized  with  horror  indescribable  ;  and 
expired,  as  it  were,  in  an  explosion  of  the  last 
feeble  life  by  the  energy  of  despair.  "What  se- 
curity can  you  have  that  yours  shall  not  be  such 
an  exit?  For  some  that  have  ended  so,  were 
exceeded  by  none  in  the  previous  ostentation 
of  confidence  in  both  their  principles  an?,  their 
bravery.  It  would  betray  a  contemptibly  reck- 
less temper  of  mind,  if  you  can  answer,  in  a 
tone  of  indifference,  that  if  such  is  to  be  the 
event,  it  will  only  be  the  addition  of  one  hide- 
ous circumstance  more,  to  the  sufferings  natu- 
rally incident  to  death  ;  the  concurrence  of  a 
disorder  of  the  mind  with  that  which  may  be 
destroying  the  body  ;  the  ultimate  working  out, 
perhaps,  of  a  little  superstition,  which  may 
have  lain  latent  from  the  infection  of  early 
false  instruction.  Allow  the  case  to  be  put  so, 
looking  no  further  ;  and  even  then,  if  you  were 
a  thoughtful  man,  and  apt,  as  comports  with 
that  character,  to  look  forward,  the  anticipation 
of  so  frightful  a  scene  as  possible,  would  be 
enough  to  quench  many  a  lively  sparkle,  to  im- 
bitter  many  an  unhallowed  gratification,  to  re- 


LIVING  FOR   IMMORTALITY.  49 

press  many  an  irreligious  dariiicj,  to  dispirit 
many  an  ambitious  project,  to  mortify  many  a 
proud  sentiment.  But  there  is  anoilier  thing 
not  to  be  overlooked,  which  may  warn  you  to 
take  care  how  you  dispose  of  tiie  matter  so 
lightly.  In  most  of  these  fearful  death-scenes 
of  infidelity,  the  unhappy  mortal  has  been  rack- 
ed to  a  confession,  that  he  had  never  dealt  hon- 
estly with  the  subject  and  with  his  sou!  ;  that 
he  had  never  fairly  examined  the  question  ; 
that  he  had  not  been  sincerely  intent  on  know- 
ing the  truth  ;  that  he  had  repelled  intrusive 
lights,  and  suppressed  remonstrant  emotions  ; 
that  he  had  suffered  his  pride,  his  vanity,  or 
his  sensuality,  to  determine  his  rejection  of  the 
authority  of  revelation.  So  that  conviction 
rushed  upon  them  not  in  the  simple  character 
of  truth,  but  also  in  that  of  vengeance.  It  had 
retreated  before  their  defiance  of  both  its  more 
imperative  and  more  gentle  attempts  during 
their  progress,  only  to  await  them  in  retributive 
pctwer  at  the  end.  See  that  you  do  not  forget 
that  circumstance  of  their  experience,  when 
you  are  disposed  to  make  so  light  of  the  ac- 
knowledged possibility  that  your  end  may  be 
like  theirs. 

But  I  am  unwilling,  while  looking  on  your 
countenance,  to  foresee  you  as  exhibiting,  one 
day,  another  such  spectacle  ;  and  will  limit  my 


50  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

imagination  to  represent  you  as  in  a  situation 
less  appalling,  but  very  mournful.  Let  it  be 
supposed  that  you  live  on,  constant  to  your 
present  system,  and  considerably  successful  in 
your  endeavor  to  make  the  best  of  the  world  on 
your  own  plan,  till  you  attain  an  advanced  age, 
a  period  when  accumulating  signs,  and  even 
the  mere  reckoning  of  time,  must  warn  you, 
that  you  have  nearly  had  your  day.  Let  it  be 
supposed,  that  you  then  happen  to  be  in  com- 
pany with  a  man  of  equal  age,  who  has  been 
governed  from  his  youth  by  a  firm  and  cordial 
faith  in  that  which  you  have  rejected.  Imagine 
that  you  hear  him,  induced,  perhaps,  by  the 
hope  of  conveying  an  influence  to  the  minds  of 
some  youthful  friends,  adverting  briefly  and  un- 
ostentatiously to  his  past  life,  as  a  religious 
course  ;  recalling  what  he  regards  as  the  most 
sensible  commencement  of  the  decisive  opera- 
tion of  religion  on  his  mind,  when  the  convic- 
tion of  its  truth  and  necessity  became  his  reign- 
ing principle  ;  then,  noting  some  of  the  effects 
which  have  evinced,  in  their  succession,  the 
progress  of  its  efficacy,  both  in  the  power  of  its 
dominion,  and  in  the  creation  of  happiness; 
and,  finally,  expressing  with  emphasis  his  de- 
light and  gratitude,  that  now,  in  the  cold  eve- 
ning shade  of  life,  this  heavenly  light  shines 
still  brighter,   as  intermingling  with  those  rays 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  5  1 

which  are  comincr  fast  from  a  nobler  state  of 
existr'nce,  confidently  expected  to  be  attained 
through  death.  Imagine  yourself  silently  hear- 
ing all  this,  expressed  in  perfect  collectedness 
of  mind,  in  language  clear  of  all  wildness  and 
inflation,  and  observing  the  aspect  of  the  speak- 
er, uniformly  dignified,  whether  grave  or  ani- 
mated ;  and  imagine,  too,  your  own  feelings  at 
being  placed  in  such  a  comparison.  Can  you 
conceive  it  possible  for  you  to  maintain  the 
sense  of  a  privileged  condition,  or  not  to  sink 
in  the  profoundest  mortification?  What  will 
you  not  be  compelled  to  think  of  a  system, 
which  throws  an  aggravation  of  gloom  on  a  pe- 
riod which  the  order  of  nature  deprives  of 
pleasures,  and  besets  with  multiplying  grievan- 
ces, thus  brought  in  contrast  wiili  that  other 
system  which  warms,  and  invigorates,  and  en- 
riches, the  close  of  a  worn-out  beinor,  with 
something  far  better  than  all  the  vivacity  and 
prospects  of  youth?  What  will  you  think  of  a 
system,  which  forbids  thougliifulness  to  old  age, 
and  throws  it,  for  relief,  under  the  pressure  of 
its  infirmities,  upon  the  resources  of  business, 
which  it  has  no  longer  strength  to  transact,  or 
of  amusements  incongruous  with  the  character 
of  that  season,  and  in  which  the  antiquated  per- 
former appears  like  a  man  dancing  and  jesting 
to  the  place  of  execution.     You  shrink  at  the 


52  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

idea  of  being  placed  in  such  a  contrast.  1  do 
not  say  to  yon,  Embrace,  then,  without  delay, 
the  faith  which  would  place  you,  in  that  last 
stage,  on  the  superior  ground  ;  for  you  will  tell 
me,  that  your  belief  is  not  in  your  own  power; 
meaning,  wlien  you  say  so,  {is  not  this  the 
plain  truth  ?)  that  you  have  no  disposition  to  a 
serious,  diligent,  and  really  impartial  re-exam- 
ination of  the  subject ;  but,  at  least,  I  am  au- 
thorized to  advise  you  to  be  henceforth  a  little 
reserved  in  your  ridicule  of  books  describing 
the  rine  and  progress  of  religion  in  the  soul. 
If  tempted  at  any  time  to  its  unrestrained  in- 
dulgence, just  look  forward  to  the  predicament 
in  which  you  may  one  day  feel  that  you  stand, 
in  comparison  with  a  man  who  has  experienced 
that  process,  (whether  the  operating  cause  be  a 
beguilement  or  a  truth,)  and  is  joyfully  await- 
ing its  consummation.  And  I  venture  to  pre- 
dict to  you,  that,  in  such  a  case,  your  utmost 
efforts  to  re-assure  yourself  that  the  man  so 
contrasted  with  you  is  but  a  deluded  fool,  will 
do  little  to  disperse  the  gloom  settling  and 
thickening  on  your  spirit. 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  53 


CHAPTER    IV. 

EXPOSTULATIONS  TO  YOUNG  PERSONS  FROM  THE 
CONSIPERATION  OF  THE  liMMORTALITY  OF  THE 
SOUL,  ITS  RELATION  TO  ETERNITY,  AND  ITS 
ACCOUNTABLENESS    TO    GOD. 

But  now  let  us  turn  our  thoughts  to  conjec- 
ture the  kind  of  reception  which  this  good 
book  may  have  found  with  persons  of  several 
classes  greatly  different  from  the  example  we 
have  been  supposing.  We  may  assume,  as  a 
certainty,  that  it  has  caught  the  notice  of  very 
many  persons  indisposed  to  religion,  but  enter- 
taining no  doubt  that  we  have  a  revelation  to 
declare  its  nature,  and  to  command  our  solemn 
attention  to  it.  The  circumstance  did  actually 
ha[)pen,  that  the  words  of  the  title  were  taken 
in  by  the  eyes,  and  that  some  thoughts  were 
involuntarily  raised  in  the  mind.  Persons  now 
living  may  recollect  this  having  occurred  to 
them  as  an  incident  which  did  not  please  them. 
We  can  imagine  it  to  have  happened  to  more 
than  a  few  gay  young  persons,  of  minds  not  un- 
cultivated, not  left  entirely  uninstructed  respect- 
ing the  highest  concern  of  their  existence,  but 
quite  averse  to  think  of  so  serious  a  subject. 
6 


64  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

A  pious  relative  might  have  placed  the  book, 
by  a  delicate  device,  in  the  way  to  seize  the 
eye  ;  or  it  might  be  taken  up  when  casually 
lying  on  the  table  of  an  acquaintance.  And 
we  are  too  sure  that  we  are  but  picturing  an 
example  of  many  that  there  have  been  of  the 
same  kind,  when  we  imagine  we  see  the  young 
person  hastily  laying  down  the  volume,  with  a 
look  of  disappointment  and  distaste,  expressive 
of  the  sentiment,  That  is  no  book  for  me.  To 
glance  over  the  title-page  was  quite  disgust 
enough  for  so  frivolous  a  spirit  to  endure.  In 
another  instance,  we  seem  to  see  the  young 
person  inspecting  the  book  for  a  few  moments, 
in  an  unfixed,  heedless  manner,  plainly  indi- 
cating it  would  soon  be  closed  ;  presently 
throwing  it  aside,  as  worth  no  further  atten- 
tion ;  then  fortunately  detecting,  where  it  had 
slidden  in  among  belter  books,  some  very  silly 
romance  ;  seizing  it  as  a  discovered  treasure, 
and  unable  to  lay  it  down  till  a  whole  volume 
was  run  through.  Another  case  may  be  con- 
ceived, in  which  our  book,  of  the  Rise  and 
Proorress  of  Relioion,  has  chanced  to  be  within 
sight,  in  the  interval  of  animated,  restless  ex- 
pectation of  meeting  some  gay  associates,  or  of 
going  to  some  amusement  ;  when  it  detained 
the  youthful  thought  no  longer  than  to  suggest 
a  pleasurable  idea  of  the   difference,  between 


LIVING  FOR  IM.MoUTALITV.  65 

the  dull  and  funereal  business  of  religion,  and 
such  exhiliration  as  that  in  prospect.  It  might 
be  no  excess  of  fancy  to  suppose  another  case ; 
tliat  tliis  same  book  obtruded  itself  on  the 
sight  of  a  young  person  in  an  hour  of  disgust 
and  fallen  spirits,  after  suffering  some  disap- 
pointment and  mortification  amidst  those  gay 
delights  which  had  been  so  exultingly  anticipa- 
ted ;  and  that  it  excited  no  better  feeling  than 
this,  Let  me  not  have  another  odious  thing  just 
now  to  plague  me ;  I  am  vexed  and  out  of  pa- 
tience enough.  For  one  more  instance  :  a 
young  person  of  this  light  spirit  might  be  on 
terms  of  acquaintance  with  one  of  a  more 
thoughtful  character,  and  might  happen  to  find 
the  latter  reading,  or  apparently  having  just 
read,  the  book,  in  question  ;  and  might  betray 
some  marks  of  sincere  wonder  at  so  strange  a 
taste;  internally  saying.  If /were  ever  to  have 
been  caught  employed  with  such  a  book,  I 
would  have  hastily  put  it  out  of  sight,  at  the 
entrance  of  a  pleasant  visitor. — No  one  will 
doubt,  that  there  may  have  been  facts  answer- 
ing to  these  conjectural  descrij)tions  ;  and  we 
might,  with  equal  probability,  diversify  the  rep- 
resentation into  many  other  particular  forms. 
Where  and  what  are  the  persons  now,  who 
were  the  reality  of  what  we  are  thus  supposing  ? 
But  will   there  not   be   yet   many  more  human 


66  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

beings  to   be   added   to   the   account  of   such 
examples  ? 

It  may  be  that,  in  some  of  these  instances, 
the  young  person  did  not  escaj)e  receiving 
some  hints  of  admonition,  from  a  friend,  whose 
benevolent  viijilance  had  perceived  this  refusal 
to  converse  an  hour,  or  a  moment,  with  a  book 
soliciting  attention  to  the  most  important  sub- 
ject. Whatever  might  actually  be  , the  strain  of 
such  an  admonition,  we  may  think  that  friend, 
— not  laying  any  stress  on  the  bare  circum- 
stance of  dislike  to  this  particular  book,  but 
taking  occasion  from  it,  as  indicating  aversion 
to  religion  itself, — would  have  deserved  to  be 
listened  to  in  usincr  such  terms  as  the  follow- 
ing  : — Will  you  be  persuaded,  is  it  possible  to 
induce  you,  to  make  a  short  effort  with  your 
mind,  to  constrain  it  to  serious  reflection  ? 
Would  you  have  me,  or  not,  to  regard  you  as 
capable  of  thinking  and  judging,  as  in  posses- 
sion of  a  share  of  good  sense,  and  as  admitting 
that  there  really  may  be  a  just  call  for  its  exer- 
cise, even  at  your  age  ?  You  are  not  willing  to 
be  accounted  the  reverse  of  this.  Well  then, 
prove  that  you  can  think,  and  that  you  can  per- 
ceive when  there  is  a  subject  before  you  which 
has  peculiar  claims  that  you  should  think. 
And  is  there  any  thing  which  can  urge  a  more 
peremptory    claim    than   the  questions,   What 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  67 

manner  of  being  it  is  that  you  possess,  to  what 
end  you  possess  it,  and  how  it  sliould  be  occu- 
pied in  order  to  the  attainment  of  that  end  ?  Is 
your  own  nature  a  thing  of  such  little  account 
with  you,  that  you  are  quite  satisfied  with  the 
mere  fact  of  its  being  an  existence;  and  that 
you  have  no  doubt  whether  you  may  give  away 
all  its  faculties,  without  care  or  accountableness, 
to  whatever  pleases  them  and  invites  them  into 
action  ?  Does  every  consciousness  you  feel  of 
what  there  is  in  that  nature,  a^ree  to  vour  livinor 
as  a  gay  bird  of  llie  spring;  as  a  creature  made 
for  the  play  and  revel  of  mere  life  and  sensa- 
tion ;  or  at  most,  fitted  for  some  little  schemes 
of  transient  interest,  confined  to  a  span  of  ex- 
istence, and  liable  to  be  broken  up  and  given 
to  the  winds  at  any  hour  ?  Is  this  all  you  find 
in  the  endowments  of  your  nature  ;  is  this  the 
amount  of  its  capabilities  and  dignity  ?  No, 
you  would  say  ;  you  believe  that  you  possess, 
for  you  have  been  taught  that  all  of  us  do,  a 
spirit,  of  noble  quality  and  important  destina- 
tion. Do  you  indeed  believe  any  such  thing  ? 
what,  while  I  see  the  whole  vigor  of  your  being, 
animal  and  mental,  at  some  times  dissipated 
in  levity,  spirited  off  in  effusions  of  mirth  ;  or 
at  other  times  consumed  in  earnest  protracted 
assiduity  to  accomplish  some  contrivance  for 
personal  display,  some  little  feat  of  competition, 
6* 


58  LIVIXG  FOR  IMMORTALITy. 

or  some  scheme,  (a  grand  one,  you  think,)  of 
creating  for  yourself  a  happiness  for  a  few  years, 
from  materials  which  every  day  must  diminish, 
and  any  day  may  annihilate  ?  Is  it  impossible 
to  you,  or  do  you  not  think  it  worth  while,  to 
reflect  whether  so  living  be  consistent  with  so 
believincf  ?  Does  it  never  strike  you  as  a  thing 
to  wonder  at,  that  there  can  he  a  creature  so 
strangely  formed  as  to  admit  these  things  to 
coalesce,  and  that  you  happen  to  be  that  crea- 
ture ?  Or  do  you  escape  all  sense  of  inconsis- 
tency and  shame  through  mere  thoughtlessness, 
which  prevents  your  being  reminded  of  that 
truth  which  you  say  you  believe? 

Mere  thoughtlessness  !  and  how  is  that  pos- 
sible ?  How  is  it  possible  to  believe  what  you 
affirm  that  you  do,  and  not  often  feel  a  solemn 
influence  coming  over  your  mind,  and  banish- 
ing, for  at  least  a  little  while,  all  trifling  moods 
and  interests  ?  Assured  that  you  are,  as  to  the 
most  essential  property  of  your  nature,  a  spiri- 
tual and  immortal  being,  think,  account  to  your- 
self, how  it  can  be  that  such  a  conviction,  fixed 
and  abiding  within  you,  should  abide  there 
alone,  disconnected  from  all  the  activity  of 
your  ideas  and  feelings,  having,  so  to  speak, 
nothing  to  do  there  ;  while  in  all  reason  it 
ought  to  be  combined  there  with  many  most 
important  ideas  with  which  it  has  an  insepara- 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  59 

ble  relation,  and  which  it  ought  to  keep  there 
in  active  force. 

For,  consider  what  you  are  admitting,  when 
you  say  you  believe  you  are  such  a  being. 
You  are  admitting  that  yon  stand  in  a  solemn 
relation  to  t!ie  Almighty  ;  that  your  present 
state  ot'  existence  is  but  a  brief  introduction  to 
another;  that  your  body  is  but  a  frame  accom- 
modated to  retain  your  superior  and  more  essen- 
tial being  for  a  short  period  in  this  world  ;  that 
its  interests,  therefore,  and  all  interests  which 
respect  this  world  exclusively,  are  infinitely  in- 
significant in  comparison  with  those  of  the 
spirit  ;  that  you  are  every  moment  in  progress 
toward  the  experience  of  a  happiness  or  misery 
of  incalculable  magnitude  ;  and  that  this  short 
and  uncertain  life  is  the  season  for  maturing 
the  dispositions  and  habits  to  a  state  which  will 
consign  you  to  the  one  or  the  other,  if  the  de- 
clarations of  God  be  true.  Can  you  attempt  to 
deny,  or  pretend  to  doubt,  that  all  this  is  in- 
cluded in  the  fact  of  your  possessing  a  rational 
spirit,  destined  to  endless  existence,  and  most 
justly  required  to  obey  the  commands  of  your 
Creator  ?  But  if  this  be  true,  you  cannot  exer- 
cise your  judgment,  and  listen  to  your  con- 
science, for  one  hour,  without  plainly  seeing 
what  is  your  highest  interest  and  most  imperi- 
ous duty.     Nothing  in  the  world,  nothing  in  all 


60  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

truth,  can  press  upon  you  with  mightier  evi- 
dence, than  that  your  grand  business  in  life  is 
the  care  of  the  soul,  that  shall  live  for  ever. 
Confess  to  your  reason  and  conscience  that  the 
case  is  so,  and  that  any  assertion  to  the  con- 
trary would  instantly  strike  you  as  false  and 
foolish. 

You  do  confess  it.  But  what,  then,  should 
be  thought  of  you,  what  should  you  think  of 
yourself,  if  you  will  then  act  as  if  the  very  con- 
trary were  the  truth.  Suppose  that,  (in  such  a 
spontaneous  escape  of  thoughts  in  words,  as 
sometimes  happens  to  a  person  musing  in  the 
security  of  solitude,)  the  prevailing  disposition 
of  your  mind  were  to  utter  itself  involuntarily 
and  audibly,  and  in  expressions  like  these  : — 
"  My  supreme  concern  is  as  clear  to  my  view 
as  the  sun  ;  there  is  no  denying  it,  there  is  no 
question  about  it;  it  is,  to  apply  myself  earn- 
estly to  secure  the  welfare,  here  and  hereafter, 
of  my  immortal  spirit ;  but  I  feel  no  such  care; 
I  dislike  and  evade  all  admonitions  which  would 
enforce  it  on  me;  I  yield  myself  to  this  dispo- 
sition, without  restraint,  or  remorse,  or  fear,  for 
the  present,  and  shall  do  so — I  do  not  know, 
nor  much  care,  how  long."  Supposing  this 
uttered  in  an  almost  unconscious  passing  of 
your  mind  into  your  voice,  would  you  not  be 
awaked  and  startled  into  recollection  at  sounds 


LIVING  FOR  liMMURTALlTY.  61 

of  such  import,  and  be  almost  surprised  into 
the  question — "Who  was  saying  that?  Was 
it  I  ?  How  strangely  it  would  have  sounded  if 
any  one  hr.d  been  within  hearing."  If  any  one 
had  been  wiiiiin  hearing!  And  could  you  for- 
get that  there  is  One  who  perfectly  knows  that 
internal  disposition,  of  which  expressions  like 
these  might  be  the  genuine  utterance? 

While  you  are  intent  on  being  happy,  surely 
it  should  be  one  thing  regarded  as  indispensa- 
ble to  your  being  truly  so,  that  you  can  ap- 
prove yourself;  that,  whatever  imperfections 
there  are  for  you  to  condemn  and  regret,  you 
yet  can  feel  a  deliberate  complacency,  a  com- 
placency of  reflection  and  conscience,  in  the 
prevailing  habit  and  purpose  of  your  mind. 
What  is  it  worth,  that  a  variety  of  outward 
things  should  please  you,  if  you  are  haunted 
with  a  sense  that  vour  ovvn  internal  condition, 
the  condition  of  your  very  self,  is  something  to 
grieve  you  ?  Now  I  wish  it  were  possible  to 
induce  you  to  turn  upon  yourself  one  resolute, 
patient,  impartial  insj)ection.  Look,  with  the 
intentness  with  which  you  would  gaze  on  an 
emblematical  picture,  in  whose  signs  you  could 
believe  your  destiny  to  be  figured  out,  look  on 
the  being,  formed  for  an  endless  futurity,  but 
engrossed  by  the  interests  of  a  day  ;  appointed, 
after  a  short  term,   to  pass  into  another  world, 


62  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

but  repelling  all  thoughts  and  monitions  of  it; 
capable  of  an  elevated  and  perpetual  felicity, 
but  sunlc  and  expended  in  transient  pleasures 
and  precarious  hopes  ;  invited  to  communion 
with  the  Father  of  Spirits,  but  turning  au'ay^ 
with  indifference  or  aversion,  to  seek  all  that  it 
wants,  for  affection  and  assistance,  in  the  inter- 
course of  associates  who  are  equally  careless  of 
his  favor  ;  and  summoned  to  adopt  a  wise  and 
constant  discipline,  to  make  sure  of  its  true 
welfare,  in  time  and  eternity,  but  surrendering 
the  formation  of  its  character,  and  the  direction 
of  its  course,  to  whatever  may  happen  to  obtain 
the  ascendency,  to  casual  impressions,  ill  chosen 
friends,  or  the  prevailing  spirit  and  habits  of 
the  world.  Behold  this  spectacle  as  being  your- 
self, your  very  self  Do  you  turn  from  the 
sight,  and  say  you  do  not  like  to  look  at  it  T 
What,  then,  you  confess  that,  amidst  all  the 
youthful  vivacity  in  which  you  spring  to  catch 
the  passing  pleasures,  and  call  them  happiness, 
one  primary  requisite  to  true  happiness  is  want- 
ing. You  cannot  be  happy  while  you  dare  not 
be  sometimes  still,  and  abstracted  from  the  stir, 
lest  you  should  hear  a  complaining  and  accusing 
voice  from  within,  telling  you  there  is  something 
fatally  wrong  there. 

You  are  reluctant  to  give  any  attention  to  re- 
lifjion,  and  to  look  into  a  book  which  describes 


LIVIiNG  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  63 

its  Rise  and  Progress  in  the  Soul.  Why  should 
you,  you  think,  have  the  brightness  of  your 
early  season  overcast  with  the  gloom  of  such  a 
subject? — preferring,  in  effect,  that  this  shade, 
if  it  must  come  sometime,  should  wait  to  bring 
additional  darkness  over  a  period  when  the 
sunshine  of  youth  will  be  past,  and  life  be  de- 
clining into  that  season  which  you  never  think 
of  but  as  of  itself  a  dreary  one.  How  cruel  the 
gay  youth  can  resolve  to  be  to  the  aged  person 
that  he  expects  to  become  !  I  will  repel,  he 
practically  says,  all  invasion  of  a  grave  subject 
from  this  my  season  of  animation  and  delight, 
at  the  cost  of  having  it  to  come,  as  a  melan- 
choly cloud,  over  a  lime  when  I  shall,  by  the 
course  of  nature,  have  outlived  the  best  part  of 
my  life.  So  that  my  season  of  energy  and  en- 
joyment be  kept  clear,  never  mind  what  1  may 
be  accumulating  to  bring  sadness  on  my  spirit 
in  that  stage  where  I  shall  need  every  consola- 
tion.— Surely  the  consciousness  of  acting  on 
such  a  plan,  should  itself  be  enough  to  damp 
the  gayest  of  your  vivacities. 

You  are  unwilling  to  yield  to  the  claims  of 
religion.  But  will  you  not  take  the  trouble  to 
consider  what  religion  is,  and  in  what  manner 
it  concerns  you?  It  is  not  a  thing  which  your 
Creator  imposes  on  you  by  a  mere  arbitrary  ap- 
pointment ;  as  if  he  would  exact,  simply  in  as- 


64  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

sertion  of  his  supremacy,  and  in  requirement  of 
homage  from  his  creature,  soniethiiig  which   is 
in   itself  foreign  to   tlie  necessities  of  your  na- 
ture.    By   its  intrinsic  quality  it  so  corresj)onds 
to  your  nature,  tiiat  the  possession  of  it  is  vital, 
and  its  rejection    mortal,   to  your  felicity,  even 
independently  of  its   being  made  obligatory  by 
the  positive  injunction  of  the  Almighty.     From 
the  spiritual  principle  of  your  soul,  there  is  an 
absolute   necessity   that   it   be  raised   into  com- 
placent communication   with  its   Divine  Origi- 
nal ;  it  is  constituted  to  need  this  communica- 
tion,  now  and   forever  ;    and   if  it   be   not  so 
exalted,  it  is  degraded  and  prostrated  to  objects 
which  cannot,  by  their  very  nature,  adequately 
meet,   and  fill,  and  bless,   its   faculties  :    to   be 
elevated   to    this  communication,    is  religion. 
You  do  not,   I   presume,  wish  that  your  spirit 
were  a  being  destined  to  final  extinction  a  few 
years  hence  ;  but  would  you  have  it  be  immor- 
tal, and  yet  estranged  from  what  must  naturally 
concern   it   as   immortal  ?     If  really    immortal, 
it  is  under   a   plain   necessity  of  its  nature  to 
give  a  devoted  regard   to  its  interests  of  here- 
after, of  eternity  :  to  do  so,  is  religion.     Again, 
your  soul   is  tainted   with   corruption  ;  it  is  in- 
fected   with  sin  ;  you  are  sometimes  conscious 
that  it  is;  and   this  is   a   malady   which   may 
cling   to  it,   and   inhere   in   it,  after  all  bodily 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  G5 

diseases  have  ceased  in  death.  But  then  there 
is  tlie  phiiiiest  necessity  that  some  grand  opera- 
tion be  eftected  in  it  to  remove  this  fatal  dis- 
order ;  that  its  condition  be  renovated  and  puri- 
fied ;  that  the  action  of  its  powers  be  deter- 
mined to  the  right  ends;  that  its  guilt  be 
pardoned  ;  that,  in  one  word,  it  be  redeemed  : 
now  this  great  process  in  the  soul  is  religion. 
Thus  you  may  see  that  there  can  be  no  grosser 
misapprehension  than  that  which  has  sometimes 
prompted  the  impious  wish,  that  God  had  not 
made  religion  necessary  by  enjoining  it  ;  for 
that,  but  for  this  extrinsic  necessity,  this  neces- 
sity of  mere  obligation  to  his  authority,  religion 
might  have  been  neglected,  and  the  neglecter 
have  fared  never  the  worse. 

But  you  plead  that,  whatever  may  be  your 
conviction,  and  ought  to  be  your  feeling,  you 
cannot  help  regarding  religion  as  an  austere 
and  gloomy  concern  ;  that  you  have  at  times 
wished  the  case  otherwise  ;  but  so  it  is,  that 
the  subject  still  presents  the  same  repulsive  as- 
pect, whenever  it  comes  by  unpleasant  surprise, 
or  in  the  returns  of  public  or  private  religious 
instruction,  on  your  attention.  You  will  take 
every  precaution  to  avoid  being  left  alone  with 
a  person,  however  estimable  and  kind,  from 
whom  you  are  apprehensive  of  receiving  any 
/ 


66  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

admonition   respecting   it.      Perhaps  evert    the 
sight  of  a  book,  familiarly  known  to  be  (as  this 
of  the  Rise  and  Progress  of  Religion)  an  earn- 
est  pointed  inculcation  of  it,  is  like  glancing  at 
the  picture  of  a   skeleton.     The  subject  might 
become   quite   a  grievance  of  your  iife,-^even 
this  subject,  which  represents  to  you  how  to  be 
happy  forever  ! — did  not  your  health,  your  elas- 
tic spirits,  your   companions,   your  diversions, 
defend   you  so  well  against  its  frequent  or  pro- 
longed  annoyance.      But  sometimes,  perhaps, 
an   interval   does  occur,   when   it  visits  you  in 
such  a  character   of  authority,  that  your  resist- 
ance fails  for  a  short  time,  you  are  taken  at  an 
advantage,  and  compelled  to  hear  something  of 
its    declarations,    claims,    and    remonstrances. 
And  then  you   murmur,  and  say,  A  cruel  alter- 
native !    to    yield    such   submission,   or   incur 
such   consequences.       Is    it    not   hard   that    I 
should  be  required  to  surrender  all  the  delights 
which  are   the  privilege   of  my  age,  to  repress 
my  vivacity,  to  forsake  my  gay  society,  aban- 
don my  amusements,  to  inflict  self-denial  on  my 
inclinations  at  every  turn,  to  deplore  all  that  I 
am,  and    all  that   1    have  been  ;  to  force  my  at- 
tention and  affections  away  from  this  interest- 
ing world  around  me,  toward  another  and  un- 
seen world  of  which   I   know  nothing ;  to  toil 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  67 

through  severe  and  never-ceasing  exercises, 
called  discipline  ;  to  exhaust  my  ispirits  in  sol- 
emn reHeclion  ;  to  live  in  terror  lest  every  thing 
I  do  or  enjoy  should  be  sin  ;  to  renounce,  and 
put  myself  in  conflict  with,  the  prevailing  hab- 
its of  society  ;  to  be  marked  as  an  over-right- 
eous or  melancholy  mortal  ;  to  look  through  a 
darkened  medium  at  everything  in  life ;  and 
to  go  through  the  world  thinking  of  every  step 
as  a  progress  toward  the  grave  ? 

Now,  even  were  it  admitted  that  all  this  is  a 
true  representation  of  religion,  that  all  this  is 
its  requirements,  the  friend  who  is  urging  it 
upon  you  might  still  maintain  his  argument. 
The  question,  he  would  say,  what  cost  we 
should  be  willing  to  bear  in  a  process,  is  to  be 
determined,  if  wisdom  be  the  judge,  by  an  esti- 
mate of  the  result.  The  greatest  temporary 
evil  would  be  a  mild  condition  of  the  attain- 
ment of  an  eternal  good.  If  religion  actually 
did  require  all  this,  but  in  return  assured  you 
of  being  safe  and  happy  forever,  what  would 
your  high  endowment  of  reason  be  worth,  in 
practical  application,  if  you  would  not  resolve 
on  the  endurance  of  such  an  introduction,  rath- 
er than  lose  such  a  sequel  ? 

But  you  well  know  that  such  a  representa- 
tion, unqualified,  is  no  just  account  of  the  de- 


68  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY, 

mands  of  religion.  And  beware  of  allowing 
yourself  in  the  disingenuousness  of  exaggera- 
ting the  hardship,  in  order  to  extenuate  to  your 
conscience,  or  to  vindicate  against  your  friendly 
admonisher,  your  neglect  of  the  duty. 

At  the  same  time  it  is  true,  and  must  be  un- 
equivocally  avowed,    that    religion,    effectually 
prosecuted,  does   involve  great  labors,   a  disci- 
pline often  severe,  and   therefore  many  painful 
experiences.      It   must  include    much  that    is 
mortifying  to  natural  inclinations.     How  should 
it  be  otherwise  with  a   being  of  a  corrupt  na- 
ture, who   is  to   be  trained    and  prepared,  and 
that  while  under   the  incessant  influences  of  a 
corrupt  world,  for   a   final  state  of  holiness  and 
felicity?     If  the  natural  condition  of  the  mind 
be  uncongenial  with  what  is  divine  and  heaven- 
ly,   its   affections  unattempered  to  live   and  de- 
light in  that  element  which  is  the  vitality  of  the 
happiness  of  the   beings  whom,  alone   and  ex- 
clusively, the   revelation    from  God,   and  even 
your  own  reason,  authorize  you    to   conceive  of 
as  happy  in  a  superior  state, — if  there  be  this 
alienation  and  unfitness,  (and  what  is  the  aver- 
sion to  religion  but  the  proof  of  it  ?    or  rather, 
it  is  the  thing  itself,) — if  the  case  be  so,  then 
the  soul  is  in  a  condition  so  dreadfully  wrong, 
that  it  is  not  strange  the  agency  for  transform- 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  69 

ing  it  should  inflict  pain  in  the  salutary  process. 
That  it  should  work  with  some  expedients  of 
bitterness,  keenness,  and  fire,  is  quite  in  anal- 
ogy with  the  operations  necessary  for  subduing 
the  extreme  maladies  of  an  inferior  order. 
Perhaps  you  will  say  that,  as  the  Divine  Power, 
in  the  time  and  in  the  person  of  our  Lord,  an- 
nihilated the  worst  diseases  of  the  body  by  a 
single  act,  making  the  subject  perfectly  well,  in 
an  instant,  and  without  pain,  so  the  Almighty 
could  instantaneously  set  the  moral  nature 
right,  causing  the  spirit  to  rise  up  suddenly  in 
the  delightful  consciousness,  that  not  a  particle 
of  evil  remains,  blessed  witii  a  triumph  over  the 
disastrous  fall,  and  assuming  a  ground  still 
higher  than  that  which  our  first  progenitor  lost. 
No  doubt  he  could  ;  but  since  he  has  not  willed 
such  an  economy,  the  question  comes  to  you, 
whether  you  can  deliberately  judge  it  better  to 
carry  forward  a  corrupt  nature,  uncorrected, 
untransformed,  unreclaimed  to  God,  into  the 
future  state  where  it  must  be  miserable,  than  to 
undergo  whatever  severity  is  indispensable  in 
the  ])rocess  of  the  religion  which  would  prepare 
you  for  a  happy  eternity.  Reflect,  that  you  are 
every  day  practically  answering  the  question. 
Can  it  be  that  you  are  answering  it  in  the 
afl[irmative  ?     Do  1  really  see  before  me  the  ra- 


70  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

tional  being  who  in  effect  avows, — I  cannot, 
will  not,  submit  to  such  a  discipline,  though, 
in  refusing  it  and  resisting  it,  I  renounce  an 
infinite  and  eternal  good,  and  consign  myself 
to  perdition  ? 

Religion,  it  is  acknowledged,  brings  its 
pains  ;  just  because  it  comes  from  heaven  to 
maintain  a  deadly  conflict  in  the  soul,  with 
principles  and  dispositions  which  are  rebellious 
against  heaven,  and  destructive  to  the  soul  it- 
self. Nothing  can  be  more  thoughtless  or  un- 
knowing than  the  strain  in  which  some  have 
indulged  in  the  recommendation  of  it,  as  if  it 
were  all  facility  and  enjoyment.  You  have 
possibly  heard  or  read  graceful  periods  of  des- 
cant on  the  subject,  representing  to  young  peo- 
ple especially,  that  their  unsophisticated  princi- 
ples, ^AeiV  lively  perception  of  the  good  and  the 
fair,  their  generous  sentiments,  their  uncontam- 
inated  affections,  are  so  much  in  unison  with 
the  spirit  of  piety,  that  it  is  a  matter  of  the  ut- 
most ease  for  them,  for  such  as  you,  to  enter 
on  the  happiness  of  the  religious  life.  Some 
little  obstructions  surmounted,  one  light  spring 
made,  and  you  regain  the  walks  of  Eden  !  Did 
you  believe  it  ?  If  you  did,  what  unaccounta- 
ble caprice,  what  pure  wantonness  of  perver- 
sity, could  it  be  that  withheld  you  ?    Or,  if  you 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY,  71 

were  induced  to  make  some  short  attempt  in 
the  way  of  experiment,  did  you  not  wonder 
how  it  should  happen,  by  a  peculiar  untoward- 
ness  in  your  case,  that  these  youthful  qualities, 
so  congenial  with  piety,  and  so  easy  to  be  re- 
solved into  it,  did  nevertheless  prove  obstinately 
repugnant  to  the  union  ?  Did  you  not  think. 
Why,  then,  this  aversion  to  read  the  Bible,  or 
to  retire  for  serious  meditation  and  devotional 
exercise,  or  to  any  act  of  duty  to  be  done  sim- 
ply in  obedience  to  God  1  But,  the  declama- 
tion which  you  had  heard  was  idle  rhetoric,  or 
wretched  icjnorance. 

It  must  be  acknowledged,  also,  that  much 
worthier  teachers  have,  from  a  better  cause, 
sometimes  committed  an  error  in  underratincr. 
or  keeping  nearly  out  of  view,  the  austerer  cha- 
racteristics of  religion,  when  inculcating  it  on 
youth.  In  their  benevolent  zeal  to  persuade, 
they  were  desirous  of  presenting  a  picture 
wholly  attractive.  And  perhaps  religion  was 
become  so  decidedly  their  own  chief  happiness, 
that  they  could,  for  the  time,  forget  the  pains 
of  the  transformation  through  which  it  had  be- 
come so.  They  have  therefore  made  a  repre- 
sentation illuminated  nearly  all  over  with  de- 
lightful imagts.  It  is  better  that  you  should 
see   the   whole  truth,  and    clearly    understand 


72  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

that  the  agent  which,  in  a  capacity  like  that  of 
a  tutelary  spirit,  takes  in  charge  a  perverted, 
sinful,  tempted  being,  to  be  humbled  and  re- 
claimed, taught  many  mortifying  lessons,  disci- 
plined through  a  series  of  many  corrections, 
reproved,  restrained,  and  incited,  and  thus  con- 
ducted onward,  in  advancing  preparation  for 
the  happiness  of  another  world,  tnust  be  the  in- 
flicter  of  many  pains  during  the  progress  of  this 
beneficent  guardianship.  And  it  is  not,  as 
your  aversion  and  murmurs  would  imply,  the 
fault  of  religion  that  the  case  is  so,  but  of  that 
depraved  nature  which  religion  is  designed  and 
indispensable  to  redeem. 

So  much  for  the  darker  side.  But  now,  on 
the  other  hand,  you  can  surely  conceive,  as 
compatible  with  all  this,  a  great  preponderance 
of  happiness  in  this  life.  And  therefore  you 
ought  to  take  it  on  your  conscience  as  a  re- 
proach for  criminal  want  of  thought,  or  of  hon-r 
esty,  that  you  will  admit  no  other  notion  of  re^ 
ligion  than  that  of  a  gloomy  melancholy  thing. 
When  you  are  turning  away  from  it,  as  a  grim 
and  ghostly  object,  sent  to  encounter  you  for 
no  more  friendly  purpose  than  to  obstruct  you, 
with  threatening  aspect,  at  every  avenue  to  the 
scenes  of  delight,  there  ought  to  arise  within 
your  mind  a  sterner  image,  to  condemn  you  for 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  73 

wilfully  misjudging  its  character,  and  the  ser- 
vice it  lias  to  offer  you.     For  you  can  compre- 
hend that   there   is   attainable  through   the  effi- 
cacy  of  religion,   something  far  better  than  all 
you   can    hope   ever   to   enjoy  under  the  unlial- 
lowed  advantage  of  rejecting  it.     Try  faithfully 
whether  you  cannot  understand,   that  it   would 
be   a  great   felicity   to   feel  that  your   spirit   is 
changing    into    conformity  to  a  nobler  model, 
growing  into  the  only   right  constitution   and 
image  to   be   retained   forever  ;  to  feel  the  evil 
which  infests  it  is  shrinking  and  subdued  under 
a  mightier  power  ;  to  regard  the  best  and  great- 
est  Being   as   no  longer   an    appalling    object, 
thought  of  with  reluctance,  and  a  wish  that  you 
could    be   forever  out  of  his  si^ht  and  reach  ; 
but  now  with  emotions  of  love,  and  confidence, 
and    hope,    with    an    assurance    of  his    mercy 
through    Jesus  Christ,    with   an   experience   of 
real   communication   with    him   concerning    all 
your   interest!*,   and  with   a  consciousness  that 
you  are  in  activity  for  a  Master  who  will. confer 
an    infinite   reward.     Think  whether  it   would 
not  be    haj)j)y  to   feel  habitually  a  power,  main- 
taining a  sacred  control  over  your  passions  and 
your  will,  and  preserving  the  current  of  your 
life    unmingled     with    the    world's    pollutions. 
Imagine  yourself  animated,  at  the  close  of  each 


74  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

year  or  shorter  period,  with  a  fervent  gratitude 
to  God,  in  the  consideration  what  sins  and  fol- 
lies he  has  saved  yon  from  thus  much  longer. 
Can  you  doubt  whether  that  one  emotion  would 
really  be  worth  more,  to  an  accountable  being, 
than  all  the  pleasurable  feelings  which  an  irre- 
ligious person  can  have  enjoyed  during  the 
whole  interval  ? 

Place  before  your  mind  a  scheme  of  life,  in 
which  you.  shall  see  yourself  committing  to  the 
care  and  disposal  of  a  beneficent  Providence, 
the  course  of  your  life  from  the  beginning,  with 
a  constant  assurance  that  Sovereign  Wisdom 
and  Goodness  will  watch  over  all  its  movements 
and  events,  will  conduct  you  through  its  per- 
plexities and  perils,  will  give  you  just  so  much 
temporal  good  that  more  would  not  be  for  your 
welfare,  and  will  constrain  all  things  which  you 
are  to  pass  through  to  co-operate  to  your  ulti- 
mate happiness.  Think  also  of  enjoying  the 
consciousness  that  you  are  not  throwing  the  in- 
estimable spring  season  of  your  life  away,  but 
expending  it  so  as  to  enrich  every  succeeding 
period,  and  to  ensure  a  fine  setting  sun  upon 
the  last.  Say  honestly,  whether  all  this  be  not 
something  better  than  any  scheme  of  life  which 
you  have  indulged  your  imagination  in  shaping. 
Or,  if  you  sometimes  surrender  yourself  to  the 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  75 

fascinalions  of  romance  and  poetry,  glowing 
over  brifrht  pictures  of  felicity  in  which  religion 
has  no  place,  make  the  experiment  on  your 
mind,  in  an  hour  of  cooler  feeling,  whether  you 
dare  pronounce  that  it  would  be  well  to  forego 
this  happiness  of  religion,  by  a  preference  of 
that  exhibited  in  these  higl.ly  colored  fictions, 
on  the  supposition  that  they  could,  for  you,  be 
turned  into  reality.  Yes,  (f  these  images  could 
be  turned  into  facts ;  but  let  me  hint  to  you, 
that  the  very  exhibitors  of  these  delectable  fab- 
rications out  of  air  would  scorn  your  folly  in 
expecting  any  such  realization.  They  would 
tell  you,  deriding  your  simplicity,  that  the 
shows  which  enchant  you  so  much  are  the  cre- 
ation of  their  genius,  exerted  to  a  much  finer 
purpose  than  that  of  representing  an  actual  or 
even  possible  order  of  things  ;  that  they  con- 
sciously and  intentionally  abandon  the  ground 
on  which  plain  mortality  must  toil  along  through 
ordinary  good  and  evil,  to  range  among  imagin- 
ary element,  obsequious  to  their  will.  Ludi- 
crous and  juvenile  indeed,  they  would  say, 
must  be  the  crediijity  of  any  one  setting  out  to 
find  somewhere,  asJ,a  fact,  what  it  requires  the 
utmost  of  their  inventive  power  but  to  figure 
out  in  fiction.  And  you  may  perceive,  if  you 
have  any  sober  observation,  that  no  such  felic- 


?6  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

ity,  wrought  out  of  the  mere  materials  of  this 
world,  is  actually  in  the  possession  of  any  of  its 
inhabitants — its  youthful  inhabitants,  I  mean  ; 
for  yourselves  will  readily  allow,  that  those  of 
them  who  are  grown  old,  and  are  going  to  leave 
it,  must  have  a  hopeless  task  in  striving  to 
make  it  yield  them  happiness,  when  it  is  shak- 
insf  themselves  off;  shaking  them  off  who  have 
expended  their  life  in  idolizing  it,  and  are 
clinging  to  it  in  the  forlorn  condition  of  feeling 
no  hope  or  attraction  toward  a  better. 

You  do  not  deserve  to  know  how  to  be  hap- 
py, even  in  this  life,  if  you  will  not  be  persuaded 
to  make  an  honest  effort  of  comparison  between 
any  scheme  that  would  promise  to  make  you 
80  independently  of  religion,  and  the  felicity 
which  would  attend  a  religious  course,  com- 
mencing in  youth. 

Do  not  think  to  defend  yourself  by  saying, 
that  the  representation  how  happy  a  youthful 
spirit  might  be  in  a  devotement  to  religion,  is 
greatly  exaggerated.  Besides  that  in  theory  it 
is  evidently  in  the  nature  of  that  great  cause, 
and  in  the  gracious  design  and  promise  of  Him 
from  whom  it  descended,  that  it  should  confer 
advantages  surpassing  all  others,  jou  should  be 
willing  to  receive  testimony  as  to  the  fact,  from 
those  who  have  gone  effectually  into  the  experi- 


LIVING   FOR  IMMORTALITY.  77 

ment.     And   you   know,  that  they   whom  you 
verily  believe  to  have  made  the  most  competent 
trial,  are  the  most  decided,  though  not  boastful, 
in  their   declarations  ;    and    that   the   tenor   of 
their  deportment   proves  their  sincerity.     Ob- 
serve some  of  those  young  persons,  (I  hope  you 
are  not  so  unfortunate   as  not  to  know  such,) 
whom   you   yourself  believe   to    be   most    fully 
under  the  power  of  religion  ;  call  them,   if  you 
will,  its  prisoners,  its  bondmen,  its  slaves  ;  some 
of  your  gay  companions  attempt  to  ridicule  them 
as  its  fools ;  but  do  you  observe   whether  their 
piety  conduces  to  their  happiness.     It  is  true, 
they  are  not  happy  after  the   manner  in  which 
your  lighter  friends  account  of  happiness;  not 
happy,  if  the  true  signs  of  that  state  be  a  vola- 
tile spirit,  a  continual  glitter  of  mirth,  a  dissipa- 
tion of  mind  and  time  among  trifles,  a  dread  of 
reflection    and   solitude,   an   eager    pursuit  of 
amusements  ;   in  short,  a  prevailing  thoughtless- 
ness, the  chief  suspensions  of  which  are  for  the 
study  of  matters  of  appearance  and  fashion,  the 
servile   care  of  faithfully   imitating  the   habits 
and  notions  of  a  class,   or  perhaps  the  acquire- 
ment of  accomplishments  for  show.     It  must  be 
confessed,  they   have  thoughts   too  grave,  the 
sense  of  too  weighty   an  interest,  a  conscience 
too  solicitous,   and  purposes  too  high,  to  per- 
8 


78  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY'. 

mit  them  any  rivalry   with   the  votaries  of  such 
felicity.     Certainly  they  feel  a  dignity  in  their 
vocation,    which    denies  iheni  the  pleasure  of 
being  frivolous.     But  you   vi'ill  see  them   often 
cheerful,  and   sometimes  very  animated.     And 
their  animation  is  of  a  deeper  tone  than  that  of 
your  sportive  creatures  ;   it  may  have  less  of  an- 
imal briskness,  but  there  is  more  soul  in  it.     It 
is   the   action    and    fire  of  the  greater  passions,- 
directed    to   greater   objects.     Their   emotions 
are    more   internal    and    cordial  ;    they   can    be 
cherished  and  abide  within   the   heart,   with   a 
prolonged,  deep,  vital  glow  ;   while  those  which 
spring  in   the  youthful    minds  devoid  of  reflec- 
tion and  religion,  seem  to  give  no  pleasure  but 
in    being   thrown   off'  in   volatile  spirits  at  the 
surface.     Did  you  think  that  these  disciples  of 
relision  must   renounce   the  love  of  pleasure  1 
Look,  then,  at    their    policy    for    securing  it. 
The  most  unfortunate  calculation  for  pleasure 
is  to  live  expressly  for  it;  they  live  primarily 
for  duty,  and  pleasure  comes  as  a  certain  con- 
sequence.    If  you  have  but  a  cold  apprehension 
of  the  degree  of  such   pleasure,  if  you  can  but 
faintly  conceive  how  it  should  be  poignant,  you 
can  at  least  understand  that  it  must  be  genuine. 
And  there  is  in  it  what  may  be  called  a  prin- 
cipal of  accumulation  ;  it  does  not  vanish  in  the 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  79 

enjoyment,  but,  while  passing  as  a  sentiment, 
remains  as  a  reflection,  and  grows  into  a  store 
of  complacent  consciousness,  wfiich  the  mind 
Tetains  as  a  possession  left  by  what  has  been 
possessed.  To  have  had  such  pleasure  is  plea- 
sure, and  is  so  still  the  more,  the  more  of  it 
is  past.  Whereas  you  are  aware,  if  you  have 
been  at  all  observant  of  the  feelings  betrayed 
■by  the  youthful  children  of  folly,  in  the  intervals 
of  their  delights,  (and  does  nothing  in  your  own 
experience  obtrude  the  same  testimony?)  that 
those  delights,  when  past,  are  wholly  gone, 
leavincr  nothincj  to  fro  into  a  calm  habitual 
sense  of  being  happy.  The  pleasure  is  a  blaze 
which  consumes  entirely  the  material  on  which 
it  is  lighted.  So  that  the  uncalculating  youth, 
who  seized  a  transient  pleasure  last  week,  or 
yesterday,  has  no  satisfaction  from  it  to-day  ; 
but  rather,  perhaps,  feels  fretted  with  a  sense 
of  being  cheated,  and  left  in  an  irksome  va- 
cancy, from  which  he  has  no  relief  but  in  re- 
covering his  eagerness  to  pursue  another, 
which  is  in  the  same  manner  to  pass  entirely 
away.  And  observe,  this  is  the  description  of 
the  unenviable  kind  of  felicity  of  the  less  crim- 
inal class  of  the  young  persons  destitute  of  re- 
ligion ;  it  represents  the  condition  of  those  who 
surrender  their  spirits  and    life   to  vain  and  tri- 


80  LlVIiNG  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

fling  interests,  as  distinguished  from  the  grosser 
evil  which  we  denominate  vice.  To  insist  that 
religion  is  better  than  that,  as  productive  of 
happiness  in  this  life,  would  seem  but  an  im- 
pertinent pleading  in  its  favor. 

Now  be,  for  once,  a  thoughtful  and  serious 
being,  willing  to  apprehend  the  contrast  be- 
tween all  this  and  the  state  of  a  young  person 
who  feels  a  profound  invariable  conviction  that 
he  has  made  the  right  choice  ;  who  finds  that 
his  grand  purpose  will  bear  the  severest  exer- 
cise of  his  judgment,  and  pleases  him  the  most 
when  he  judges  the  most  rigorously ;  who  feels 
an  elation  of  spirit  in  vowing  an  eternal  fidelity 
to  his  object ;  who  beholds  it  undiminished  in 
excellence,  if  there  come  a  season  of  gloom 
over  his  other  interests  and  prospects,  when  it 
proves  to  be  not  a  thing  of  mere  splendid  col- 
ors, which  vanish  in  a  deepening  shade,  but 
of  intrinsic  lustre,  a  luminary  which  shines 
through,  and  shines  the  brighter  for,  the  dark- 
ness. Not  that  this  youth  makes  any  preten- 
sion to  be  a  stoic  philosopher,  serenely  inde- 
pendent of  the  temporal  good  and  evil  attend- 
ing or  awaiting  his  progress  into  life,  with  no 
warm  affections  to  the  things  in  the  scene 
around  him,  to  be  painfully  mortified  when  ad- 
verse events  and  influences  frustrate  his  hopes 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  81 

and  projects.  But  his  advantage  over  those  of 
his  coevals  who  have  no  better  than  such  inter- 
ests, is,  that  he  has  enshrined  his  best  aflections 
in  that  one  tiling  which  does  not  partake  of 
mortality  and  tiiis  world's  uncertainty,  and 
therefore  but  evinces  its  worthiness  the  more 
under  the  failure  of  every  thing  else  that  can 
fail.  It  is,  like  Him  who  is  its  author  and 
guardian,  '*  the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for 
ever."  The  pious  youth,  then,  is  not  aban- 
doned, for  his  chief  enjoyment,  to  an  endless 
fluctuation,  alternating  between  delight  and 
disgust,  eager  to  seize,  and  wondering  that  the 
possession  turns  so  soon  to  nothing  ;  all  the 
while  neglecting,  or  fearful  to  reflect,  whether 
the  whole  plan  be  not  essentially  wrong  ;  and 
thus  fulfilling  the  decree,  that  **  to  him  that 
trusteth  in  vanity,  vanity  shall  be  the  recom- 
pense." 

Be  assured  there  are  young  persons  who  can 
testify  that  this  is  their  own  experience  of  the 
happiness  of  religion,  in  so  considerable  a  de- 
gree as  to  inspire  an  earnest  wish  to  become 
more  completely  possessed  by  its  power,  from 
the  conviction  that  then  they  should  be  much 
happier  still.  And  now  do  not  let  your  mind 
evade  the  question,  whether  they  would  not  be 
right  in  the  feeling,  that  they  would  not  for  all 
8^ 


82  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

the  world  be  in  the  condition  of  those  who 
never  think  of  religion  but  as  the  enemy  of 
youthful  happiness.  Some  of  them  can  well 
remember  when  they  were  themselves  in  that 
condition ;  and  they  would  at  any  time  prefer 
instant  death  to  the  calamity  of  relapsing  into 
it.  No  wonder,  then,  if  you  perceive  them 
holding  extremely  light  the  opinion  of  those, 
too  many  of  their  own  age,  who  can  look  on 
them  with  a  propensity  to  ridicule,  or  an  affec- 
tation of  pity. 

And,  tell  me,  what  do  you  think  of  such 
judges  ?  I  conjecture  you  may  have  been  under 
no  small  influence  of  the  opinions  of  some  rath- 
er like  them,  and  would  have  deemed  it  a  sad 
misfortune  to  be  discountenanced  in  their  com- 
munity, or  excluded  from  it  by  their  aversion. 
But  at  what  rate  do  you  really  estimate  their 
judgment?  If  they  were  to  tell  you,  plainly, 
that  it  is  needless  and  unseasonable  in  youth  to 
consider  deeply  of  the  best  use  of  life,  with  ref- 
erence to  both  its  continuance  and  conclusion  ; 
to  begin  the  expending  of  your  time  with  a 
careful  estimate  of  its  value  ;  to  feel  the  impor- 
tance ofyotu  inmiortal  nature,  and  be  solicitous 
for  its  welfare  ;  to  seek,  as  the  highest  good, 
the  favor  of  the  Almighty  ;  in  short,  to  begin 
well,  that  you  may  go  on  well,  and  end  well, — 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  83 

if  they  were  expressly  to  tell  you  so,  as  their 
opinion,  what  would  you  think  their  opinion 
worth  ?  And  should  you  not  be  ashamed  of 
whatever  it  was  in  your  own  mind  that  could 
give  that  opinion  any  weight  with  you?  Tiiink 
how  it  should  be  possible  for  you  to  feel,  for  a 
moment,  any  thing  but  contempt  or  pity  for 
their  very  understanding.  But  if  they  did  not 
tell  you  so,  and  could  not  deny  that  the  con- 
trary is  true,  what  should  you  account  of  their 
conscience,  their  practical  principle  ?  Or,  if 
they  never  reflected  enough  to  have  any  opinion 
at  all  of  the  matter,  what  should  you  deem  of 
tliem  altogether,  as  authorities  and  examples  ? 
Perhaps  your  plea  would  be,  that  they  are 
nevertheless,  full  of  vivacity,  pleasant  and  joy- 
ous ;  and  that  you  must  confess  this  captivates 
you  so,  that  you  have  not  thought  of  any  such 
grave  affair  as  that  of  thus  taking  account  of 
them.  But,  while  you  plead  so,  you  know  how 
flimsy  is  the  consistence  of  this  joyous  mood  of 
theirs,  and  by  what  means  you  could  instantly 
break  it  up.  It  is  like  that  thin  slime  of  varie- 
gated hues  which  you  sometimes  see  spread  on 
the  surface  of  polluted  water,  and  which  you 
can  disperse  into  fragments  by  throwing  in  a 
twig  or  stone.  When  they  are  at  the  highest 
pitch  of  their  spirits,  and  apparently  "  shut  up 


84  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

in  measureless  content,"  you  have  but  just  to 
mention  the  doom  we  are  all  under  to  die;  to 
name  some  young  person  of  their  acquaintance 
who  lately  died,  perhaps  in  great  distress  and 
alarm  for  having  been  thoucrhtless  like  them  : 
or  to  make  an  allusion  to  the  final  account, — 
'*  For  all  these  things  God  will  bring  thee  into 
judgment ;" — you  have  but  to  do  this,  and  you 
will  quench,  for  the  time,  all  their  animation, 
and  will  see  what  awkward  efforts  they  will 
have  to  make  for  its  recovery.  But,  then,  when 
you  would  plead.  Why  should  you  not  be  al- 
lowed to  have,  free  and  unalloyed,  the  pleasure 
of  your  youth  with  and  like  so  many  of  your 
age,  and  be  innocently  happy  though  without 
religion — does  not  your  conscience  smite  you 
at  the  reflection,  that  you  are  coveting  the  par- 
ticipation of  a  happiness  which,  in  its  liveliest 
hour,  ten  words,  or  five,  would  suffice  to  dash  ; 
and  those  words  no  other  than  such  as  every 
young  person  should  often  hear,  and  with  a  se- 
rious thought  of  their  import? 

There  is  but  one  topic  more  on  which  I  will 
expostulate  with  you.  Perhaps  you  will  say 
that  your  neglect  of  religion  is  only  deferring 
it ;  that  you  are  sensible  it  is  a  concern  which 
you  must  attend  to  sometime,  and  that  you  are 
fully  resolved  to  do  so  in  maturer  or  advanced 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  85 

life.  And  are  you  saying  this  with  the  images 
before  your  mind  of  one,  and  another,  and  still 
another,  within  the  circle  of  your  knowledge, 
whom  you  have  seen  cut  off  in  youth  ?  Go, 
stand  by  their  graves  and  repeat  it  there  ;  for 
there  is  folly  in  it,  if  you  could  not  on  those 
spots  repeat  it  with  undisturbed  assurance. 
Say,  over  those  dead  forms,  now  out  of  sight, 
but  which  you  can  so  well,  in  memory,  recall, 
such  as  you  saw  them,  alert  and  blooming,  and 
smiling,  say  there  deliberately,  that  you  know 
not  why  you  should  not  be  quite  at  your  ease 
in  delaying  to  some  future  distant  time  your 
application  to  that,  without  which  you  believe 
it  to  be  a  fearful  thing  to  pass  out  of  life.  It  is 
possible  that  some  one  of  them,  in  approaching 
the  last  hour,  expressed  or  conveyed  to  you  an 
earnest  admonition  on  this  subject,  conjuring 
you,  in  the  name  of  a  friend  dying  in  youth,  to 
beware  of  the  guilt  and  hazard  of  delay.  If  so, 
go  to  the  grave  of  that  one  especially,  and  there 
pronounce,  that  an  impertinence  was  uttered  at 
a  season  when  every  sentence  ought  to  be  the 
voice  of  wisdom.  Say,  "  I  am  wiser  in  this 
carelessness  of  my  spirit,  than  thou  wast  in  the 
very  solemnity  of  death."  Why  should  you 
shrink  at  the  idea  of  doing  this  ?  And  if  you 
dare  not  do  it,  what  verdict  are  you  admitting, 


86  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY 

by  implication,  as  the  just  one  to  be  pronounced 
on  your  conduct  ? 

But  perhaps  you  are  ready  to  reply,  that  this 
is  pushing  the  argument  beyond  its  real 
strength  ;  for  that  I  seem  to  be  assuming  it  as 
probable  that  your  life  will  terminate  in  youth  ; 
whereas,  judging  from  a  collective  account  of 
the  actual  duration  of  lives,  I  must  know  this  is 
not  the  probability.  Just  so,  no  doubt,  in  ref- 
erence to  themselves,  thought  they  whom  you 
have  seen  vanish  in  their  early  day.  And  a 
few  examples,  or  even  one,  of  the  treacherous- 
ness  of  the  calculation,  should  suffice  to  warn 
you  not  to  hazard  any  thing  of  great  moment 
on  so  menacing  an  uncertainty.  For,  in  all 
reason,  when  an  infinitely  important  interest  is 
depending,  a  mere  possibility  that  your  allot- 
ment may  prove  to  be  like  theirs,  is  to  be  held 
of  far  greater  weight  on  the  one  side,  than  the 
alleged  probability  of  the  contrary  is  on  the 
other.  The  possibility  of  dying  unprepared, 
takes  all  the  value  from  even  the  highest  proba- 
bility that  there  will  be  prolonged  time  to  pre- 
pare :  plainly  because  there  is  no  proportion 
between  the  fearfulness  of  such  a  hazard  and 
the  precariousness  of  such  a  dependence.  So 
that  one  day  of  the  certain  hazard  may  be  safe- 
ly asserted   to  be  a  greater  thing  against  you, 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  87 

than  whole  imaginary  years,  promised  yon  by 
the  probability,  ought  to  be  accounted  of  value 
for  you. 

In  minor   concerns,   there  may   be  purposes 
not  improperly  formed  by  a  healthy  young  per- 
son, which,  though  he  could  efTcct  them  now, 
he  may  defer  upon  a  calculation  of  protracted 
life;   because  the  degree  of  probability  that  his 
life  will  be  protracted  may   be  equal  to  any  de- 
gree of  importance  or  urgency  that  there  is  in 
the  design  ;  so  that  he  may  be  content  to  refer 
and  trust  it  to  that  degree  of  probability,  saying 
thus, — I  reckon  on  accomplishing  such  a  pur- 
pose,  if  my    life    be  prolonged.     Or   in   other 
words,  it  is  such  a  design   that,  in  the  event  of 
his  life  not  being  so  prolonged,  it  will  be  no  se- 
rious misfortune  not  to  have  accomplished  it  at 
all.     He  may  be  content  to  hold,  as  thus  de- 
pendent on  the  contingency  of  lengthened  life, 
a  purpose,  for  exam|)le,  of  visiting  some  foreign 
country,  of  seeking  a  more  agreeable  locality  to 
reside  in,  of  acquiring   some  particular  branch 
of    not    absolutely    indispensable    knowledge ; 
and  so  of  many  other  things.     The  object  may 
be  of  as  much  less  than  the  highest  necessity 
to  him,  as  he  possesses   less  than   a  certainty 
of  long  surviving  his  youth.     But  when  you  ac- 
knowledge a  concern  to  be   all-important,  and 


88  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

that  a  failure  in  it  would  be  immeasurably  dis- 
astrous, and  avow  a  purpose  not  to  fail  in  it, 
and  yet  can  deliberately  consign  this  purpose 
for  its  accomplishment  to  a  contingent  futurity, 
confidently  reckoning  on  years  which  you  con- 
fess may  never  be  yours,  as  an  adequate  provis- 
ion for  it  in  reserve,  this  is,  indeed  my  young 
friend  it  is,  the  worst  insanity,  because  a  crimi- 
nal one.  When  the  concern  is  so  momentous, 
and  any  hazard  from  delay  so  formidable,  this 
supposed  probability  of  your  life  being  prolong- 
ed should  not  be  taken  as  more  worth  than  it 
may  prove  to  be  worth.  And  what  would  it 
prove  to  be  worth,  in  the  event  of  your  being, 
in  this  prime  of  your  life,  attacked  suddenly  by 
an  illness  threatening  to  be  mortal  ? 

Do  not  trifle  with  the  matter  so  wretchedly 
and  wickedly  as  to  say,  that,  even  in  that  event, 
perhaps  you  may  have  time  allowed  you  for  re- 
deeming what  you  are  now  wilfully  losing,  and 
for  securing  the  safety  of  the  great  interest. 
Perhaps  may  !  why,  this  plainly  means  that 
you  may  not.  But  even  if  such  an  undeserved 
indulgence  should  be  granted,  and  your  per- 
verse will  be  suddenly  transformed  to  make  the 
utmost  use  of  it,  are  you  not  at  this  moment  in- 
fallibly certain  that  it  would  be  a  cause  of  in- 
expressible grief  to  you  to  have  made  nothing 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  89 

of  life,  for  its  grand  purpose,  till  on  the  point  of 
breatliincT  its  last  ?  Besides  lliat.  a  considera- 
tion  of  what  is  the  merely  natural  effect  of  the 
dread  of  death,  might  justly  throw  a  painful 
uncertainty  on  the  genuineness  of  the  principle 
which  excited  your  solicitudes  and  efforts. 
Besides,  too,  that  you  are  perfectly  aware  se- 
vere illness  is  a  situation  to  the  last  degree  un- 
adapted  to  hard  exercises  of  mind. 

If  you  can  give  your  attention  for  a  while 
to  such  representations,  and  still  feel  tiiat  you 
dare  consign  your  most  momentous  interest  to 
take  the  chance,  if  I  may  express  it  so,  of  your 
having  time  for  it  long  after  the  season  of  youth, 
and  can  look  undisturbed,  undismayed,  at  the 
uncertainty  where  you  shall  be  when  the  time 
so  reckoned  upon  shall  arrive,  it  seems  almost 
in  vain  to  reason  with  you  any  further ;  ex- 
cept entreating  you  to  turn  one  reflection  on 
the  stale  of  that  mind  with  which  it  is  in  vain 
to  reason  to  such  a  purpose.  Nevertheless, 
there  are  considerations  which  might  be  en- 
forced  upon  you,  even  though  you  could  have 
every  degree  of  assurance,  short  of  absolute 
certainty,  that  a  time  far  off"  in  prospect  will  be 
yours  in  this  life. — I  am  supposing,  all  the 
while,  that  you  really  do  intend,  or  think 
9 


90  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

you  intend,  to  apply  yourself  in  earnest  to  the 
suprenrie  concern  at  a  more  advanced  period  of 
your  days. 


CHAPTER   V. 

THE  DECEPTIONS  AND  IMMINENT  HAZARDS  OF  DE- 
FERRING RELIGION  AND  THE  CARE  OF  THE  SODL 
TO    AN    UNCERTAIN    FUTURE    TIME. 

It  has  been  already  enough  insisted  on,  that 
religion  would  make  you  far  happier  than  any 
thing  you  can  enjoy  in  the  neglect  of  it,  during 
youth  itself,  considered  as  one  distinct  stage ; 
but  I  would  now  speak  of  it  as  connected  with 
the  whole  of  life,  allowing  you  to  assume,  if 
you  will,  that  your  life  is  to  reach  the  full  term 
of  the  age  of  man. 

You  say  this  protracted  life  must  and  shall 
eventually  be  religious,  confessing  that  other- 
wise all  would  be  wrong.  What  do  you  mean 
by  its  being  religious  ?  If  you  have  any  just 
conception  of  the  nature  of  religion,  while  you 
are  resolving  that  your  life  shall  sometime  as- 


LIVING   FOU  IMMORTALITY.  91 

sume  that  character,  you  are  resolving  it  shall 
thou  be  service  to  God.  But,  now,  what  claims 
can  there  be,  tliat  he  will  have  on  any  later 
portion  of  your  life,  hut  has  not  on  this  earlier? 
Answer  your  conscience  whi/  it  should  be  a 
duty  to  serve  him  them,  if  it  be  no  duty  now. 
What  is  to  bring  you  under  an  obligation  from 
which  you  are  now  exempt  ?  is  it  that  you 
will  then  be  more  dependent  on  him,  or  subsist 
more  entirely  on  his  bounty,  or  be  more  imme- 
diately and  conf5tantly  in  his  presence  ?  Or  is 
it  that  you  will  have  more  vigor  and  liberty  for 
his  service  ;  that  you  will  have  less  to  do  with 
the  cares  and  crrievances  of  the  world  ?  Or  is 
it  that  he  has,  in  the  communications  of  his 
will,  less  expressly  required  the  services  of 
youth,  than  of  more  advanced  age  ;  giving,  by 
implication,  a  license  to  youthful  spirits  to  for- 
get him,  and  to  take  favors  most  largely  at  his 
hands,  on  an  unrlerstanding  that  there  is  to  be 
no  present  return  ?  No  ;  you  readily  say  that 
all  this  is  absurdity.  You  do  not  deny,  that 
there  extends  over  your  whole  life  one  grand 
obligation  of  service  to  God  ;  only,  you  have 
your  own  purposes  to  serve,  and  he  must  wait  ! 
lie  has  given  you,  for  cultivation,  a  small  tract 
of  life,  of  time,  on  which  you  might  raise  pre- 
cious  things   for  offerings   to   him  ;  when  you 


92  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

have  exhausted  its  best  faculties  of  production 
to  gratify  yourself,  you  will  resign  to  him  what 
it  may  be  made  to  yield  when  reduced  to  the 
condition  of  sterility  and  weeds.  But  suppos- 
ing you  should  become  truly  religious  in  the 
latter  part  of  life,  you  can  even  now  understand, 
that  the  very  emphasis  and  intensity  of  the  con- 
victions of  that  new  state  of  mind  will  be  to 
feel  how  absolute  was  the  duty,  and  how  sub- 
lime would  have  been  the  happiness,  of  de- 
voting every  stage  of  life  to  the  service  of  God. 
What,  then,  will  be  the  reflections  with  which 
conscience  will  sting  you,  for  having  expended 
the  most  animated  part  of  it  on  the  principle, 
that  what  would  be  gained  to  him,  would  be 
lost  to  you  1 

Again,  when  you  are  making  to  yourself 
these  promises,  that  you  certainly  will  some- 
time, in  a  yet  distant  part  of  life,  apply  yourself 
seriously  to  religion,  you  must  mean,  that  you 
will  make  it  an  earnest  concern  that  your  spirit, 
by  that  time  advanced  far  toward  the  conclu- 
sion of  its  sojourn  on  earth,  may  attain  a  pre- 
pared state  for  removing  to  a  superior  and  per- 
manent scene  of  existence.  This  is  what  you 
mean,  is  it  not  ?  But  then  how  can  it  be,  that 
you  are  not  struck  with  a  sense  of  something 
flagrantly  absurd,  in  a  plan  of  excluding  from 


LIVIXli   FOR  I.MMOIITALITV.  93 

all  but  the  latter  portion  of  life,  an  affair  stand- 
ing related  to  so  rniglity  a  consequence  1  Think 
of  that  existence  durini{  endless  ages,  an  exist- 
once  to  commence  in  a  condition,  determined 
for  happiness  or  misery,  by  the  state  of  mind 
which  shall  have  been  formed  in  this  introduc- 
tory period.  And  is  this  the  single  case  in 
which  all  rules  oi'  jtrojjortioii  may,  without  ab- 
surdity, and  with  impunity,  be  set  aside  ?  You 
intend,  I  will  suppose,  to  apply  as  much  as  a 
few  years,  somewhere  yonder  in  the  decline  of 
life,  to  this  great  business  of  preparation  ;  that 
is  to  say,  as  much  of  the  time  within  those 
years  as  will  not  be  inevitably  consumed  by 
worldly  cares  and  attention  to  your  infirmities. 
That  is  the  measure  of  time  to  be  placed  over 
against  the  immense  futurity !  Behold  those 
two,  presented  in  such  a  relation.  Look  at 
that  ocean,  and  at  the  competence  of  the  time 
to  prepare  a  vessel  for  launching  upon  it.  Set 
the  poor  fragments  of  weeks  and  months  in  the 
years  so  appropriated  in  your  determination, 
set  them,  in  your  view,  against  the  ensuing 
millions  of  years  or  ages.  Have  you  no  percep- 
tion of  a  frightful  disproportion? 

If  you    attempt   an   evasion    by    saying,   but 
what  would  be  the  ichole  of  this  short  life,  em- 
ployed in  preparation,  as  set  against  that  futu- 
9* 


94  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

rity  ! — the  answer  is,  lliat  the  whole  term  of 
life,  diminutive  as  it  is  for  a  preparatory  intro- 
duction to  that  stupendous  sequel,  is  what  our 
Creator  has  allotted  to  us,  leaving  to  us  no  re- 
sponsibility that  it  is  not  longer,  and  is  there- 
fore a  space  of  time  which  his  blessing  can 
render  competent  to  the  great  purpose  ;  but 
you  are  presuming  to  take  a  different  and  ex- 
ceedingly diminished  measure,  on  your  own  re- 
sponsibility ;  apportioning  off,  as  an  adequate 
space  for  the  preparation,  a  small  section  only 
of  what  he  has  assigned  for  it.  This  is,  in 
effect,  telling  him  that  a  far  shorter  time  than 
the  short  one  which  he  has  allotted  for  the  pur- 
pose, will  be  quite  enough  for  it ;  and  demand- 
ing of  him  that  his  blessing  shall  be  conferred 
on  this  arbitrary  unsanctioned  adjustment  of 
your  own,  so  as  to  make  a  shorter  time  suffice 
for  the  object,  than  that  which  he  has  appoint- 
ed and  required  to  be  devoted  to  its  accomplish- 
ment. But  turn  your  thoughts  upon  your  con- 
duct, to  reflect  what  an  act  of  reason  you  are 
performing  when  you  say.  The  whole  of  the 
time  which  God  has  assigned  for  a  preparation 
to  enter  happily  on  an  eternal  existence  is 
very  short,  and  therefore  a  much  shorter  is 
sufficient  1 

And  reflect  what  an  estimate  you  are  enter- 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  95 

taining  of  both  the  nature  and  importance  of 
that  preparation  while  you  can  in  case  or  gaiety 
see  one  month  and  year  after  another  passing 
away,  and  anticii)ate  that  many  more  will  pass, 
without  contributing  to  it  one  particle.  What- 
ever truth  there  may  be  to  be  learned,  whatever 
discipline  to  be  applied,  whatever  habits  to  be 
formed,  whatever  communications  with  heaven 
to  be  opened  and  maintained,  and  whatever 
may  be  lost,  and  whatever  guilt  may  be  incur- 
red, by  neglecting  all  this,  still,  this  year,  and 
many  more  yet  to  come,  can  well  be  spared 
from  the  concern,  and  surrendered  wholly  to 
any  other  demands.  You  can  account  with 
yourself  that  it  is  so  much,  and  so  much  more, 
gained  to  your  temporary  interests,  and  lost 
only  to  the  process  for  raising  you  to  the  eter- 
nal ones.  At  the  end  of  one  of  these  periods 
you  have  to  reflect,  a  year  of  the  prime  and 
vigor  of  my  life  has  passed  in  a  lively  career, 
and  is  gone  to  be  mine  no  more  ;  it  might  have 
effected  for  me,  and  left  me  possessing,  some- 
thincr  of  inestimable  value  toward  what  I  own 
to  be  the  supremely  important  business  of  my 
life  ;  but  it  has  left  me  nothing.  When  I  shall 
be  constrained,  at  length,  to  apply  myself  to 
that  business  with  all  my  might,  1  shall  have  to 
remember   this   year,    with   the   consciousness 


96  LIVING  FOR  iMMOKTALlTY. 

that  there  is  not  with  me  one  advantage  de- 
rived from  it  in  aid  of  my  new  and  difficult  un- 
dertaking ;  tiiat,  as  relative  to  that  concern,  it 
was,  by  my  own  determination,  flung  with  all 
its  rich  possibilities  out  of  my  existence  ;  that  I 
shall  have  no  benefit  from  it  to  all  eternity. 
You  will  have  to  reflect — I  decided  that  the 
latter  part  of  my  life  was  all  I  wouJd  give  to 
the  great  aff'air;  1  have  accomplished  my  de- 
termination by  alienating  from  it  the  finest  por- 
tion of  my  life  !  1  advance  to  old  age,  to  death, 
to  judgment,  to  eternity,  under  tiie  voluntary 
loss  ;  and  wiiether,  with  tiie  impoverished  re- 
sources of  this  late  remainder  of  my  time,  I 
shall  succeed  or  fail  in  the  grand  work,  I  shall 
for  ever  have  to  remeniber,  that  1  have  not 
thought  it  worth  appropriating  to  it  my  most 
valuable  years. 

So  you  will  have  to  reflect.  But  now  is  the 
time  in  which  you  are  actually  doing  that  on 
which  you  will  have  so  to  reflect ;  you  are  de- 
liberately and  daily  adding  something  toward 
your  being  placed  in  that  predicament.  It  is 
pressed  upon  you  as  the  plainest  truth  in  the 
world,  that  you  ought  to  be,  through  the  largest 
possible  extent  of  your  allotted  time  on  earth, 
in  a  state  adapted  to  an  endless  life  ;  and  you 
resolve,  and  act  on  your  resolution,  not  to  be 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  97 

in  that  state  during   many   years   of  tliis  intro- 
duction.    You   Jay    a    resolute  hand  on  this  in- 
vahiable    portion,    to    withhold    and    defend    it 
against   the   claims  of  that   sovereign   interest, 
practically  j)ronouncing  it  better,  that  the  com- 
mencing and  animated  stage  of  your  existence 
should  be  alienated  from  all  advantageous  con- 
nexion  w  ith    the   grand    whole  ;    that  it  should 
not  conduce   to   final   good  ;  that   it  should  be 
forever  lost  as   to   all    that  is  to  follow.     Let  it 
be  enough,   you  seem   to  say,  that  the  endless 
life  to  which   I   atn    appointed   and  advancing, 
shall  have,  as   I  do  intend,   a  small  part  of  this 
introductory  one  yielded  to  a  conformity  with 
the   solemnity   of  its  character,  and  applied  to 
secure    its    happiness ;    and    if  its    importance 
would  insist  on  more,  I  will  resist  the  encroach- 
ment.    No   authority   of  its   requirement  shall 
wrest  from  me  the  liberty,  of  casting  as  much 
as  I  please  of  this  precious  part  of  my  time  into 
an  abyss,  never  to  emerge  in  wealth  or  pleasure 
to  me  in  futurity.     And  whatever   that  futurity 
of  existence  may  be  the  poorer  or  the  worse  for 
so  much  lost  to  it,  I  am  content  to  stand   in  my 
lot.     My  choice  is  rather  to  f(;el  how  much  has 
been  lost   to   my   welfare   then,   tlian  to  forego 
the  pleasure  of  following  my   inclinations  now. 
And  yet,   at  this  very  time,   at  any  time,  you 


98  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

will  acknowledge  that  the  interest  of  that  futu- 
rity is  the  transcendent  one,  that  it  is  vast  and 
eternal,  tliat  it  is  critically  depending,  and  that 
it  is  your  onm.  O  what  trivial  tilings  are  the 
most  lofty  and  soleinn  words,  or  their  import 
either,  to  a  mind  that  will  not  reflect,  or  can- 
not feel  ! 

If,  nevertheless,  you  are  siill  positive  in  the 
resolution  that  you  will  devote  your  attention 
to  religion  at  a  more  advanced  period,  I  would 
represent  to  you  that  what  you  are  meanwhile 
losing,  is  not  merely  so  much  time.  You  deem 
there  is  a  peculiar  value  and  charm  in  this 
prime  of  your  life,  so  that  you  rejoice  you  are 
not  old,  nor  middle-aged.  You  do  so  even  in- 
dependently of  any  direct  thought  of  being  so 
much  further  off  from  the  latter  end.  And 
what  is  this  so  valued  peculiarity  of  youth  ? 
Doubtless  it  is  the  plenitude  of  life,  the  vigor 
and  elasticity  of  body  and  mind,  the  quickness 
of  apprehension,  the  liveliness  of  emotion,  the 
energy  of  impulse  to  experiment  and  daring. 
Now,  consider  under  what  signal  advantage, 
with  respect  to  the  subsequent  progress,  relig- 
ion would  commence  its  course  in  the  strength 
of  these  animated  forces.  It  would  be  like 
taking  a  steed  of  fire  for  some  noble  enterprise, 
instead  of  one  already  tamed  with  time  and  la- 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  99 

bor,  or  nearly  worn  down.  You  would  thus  be 
borne  onward  a  great  length  before  the  vigor  of 
nature  begins  to  reniit,  and  would  have  acquir- 
ed a  principle  of  impulsion  to  advance,  after 
that  peculiar  vigor  should  have  ceased.  Your 
youth  at  leaving  you  would  seem  to  send  its 
spirit  forward  with  you.  The  religious  career 
thus  commencing,  would  have  all  the  advantage 
which  a  stream,  of  vast  length  of  course,  ac- 
quires from  rising,  and  running  its  first  stage, 
on  the  slope  of  a  lofty  mountain,  as  compared 
with  that  which  is  put  in  motion  on  a  tract 
little  better  than  flat,  and  creeps  heavily  on  for 
want  of  such  an  impulse  from  its  origin.  So 
important  is  it  to  the  Progress  of  religion,  that 
it  should  have  the  utmost  benefit  from  its  Rise. 
Again,  consider  that  a  person  prosecuting,  in 
advanced  life,  a  course  which  he  deeply  ap- 
proves, has  a  peculiar  pleasure  in  recollecting 
it  as  having  been  also  the  favorite  interest  of 
his  youth ;  a  pleasure  additional  to  that  of 
knowing  that  his  early  life  was  not  thrown 
away.  For,  all  the  pleasing  associations  of 
that  season  adhere  and  impart  their  charm  to 
that  which  continues  the  approved  favorite  still. 
There  is  the  memory  of  departed  friends,  the 
coeval  or  elder  associates  and  promoters  of  his 
youthful   piety,   his  allies   in    the    best   cause, 


100  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

whose  images  in  some  solitary  hour  seem  to 
smile  on  him  from  the  past,  or  from  heaven. 
The  remembered  conscientious  efforts  and 
vows  of  self-dedication  augment  his  satisfac- 
tion in  that  which  he  still  feels  deserved  them 
so  well.  The  animated  emotions,  which  he 
may  sometimes  regret  that  he  cannot  now  re- 
vive in  their  vernal  freshness,  are  still  his,  as 
having  been  given  to  that  which  is  still  his,  to 
that  which  has  been  continuously  his  grand  ob- 
ject. Thus,  what  is  now  ripening  into  fruit  he 
can  delight  to  recollect  in  the  beauty  and  fra- 
grance of  its  blossom.  What  a  difference  be- 
tween this  and  the  feelings  of  a  man  who,  be- 
coming religious  in  later  life,  finds  himself  by 
that  very  cause  dissevered,  as  it  were,  from  his 
youth,  except  for  painful,  self-reproachful  re- 
flection ;  who  feels  that  its  associations,  in- 
stead of  conveying  a  genial  warmth  to  him 
along  an  unirjterrupted  train  of  {)ie(y  to  the 
present  time,  are  gone  away  in  connexion  with 
what  he  regards  as  the  dishonor  and  calamity 
of  his  existence  ;  like  the  gardens  that  once 
were  on  a  tract  which  a  man  has  lost  from 
his  estate  by  subsidence  into  the  sea. 

But  still  further  :  while  you  are  resolving  to 
adopt  the  right  plan  sometime,  and  flattering 
yourself  that  thus  there   will  have  been,  on  the 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  101 

whole,  and  in  the  conclusion  of  life's  account, 
a  safe  preponderance  in  favor  of  religion,  you 
are  to  be  admonished  that  the  absence  of  it  in 
the  earlier  part  of  life  is  something  more,  and 
worse,  than  simply  so  much  lost  to  that  account. 
It  is  not  only  that  you  are  not  religious  during 
the  time  that  you  shall  postpone  that  concern  ; 
not  only  that  you  are  rendering  so  much  of  life, 
with  respect  to  that,  a  mere  blank  ;  you  are  all 
the  while  aggravating  the  difficulty,  and  lessen- 
ing the  probability,  of  your  being  religious  at 
a  later  period,  or  ever.  Are  you  so  thoughtless 
or  unknowing  as  to  fancy  that  a  long  course  of 
estrangement  from  this  interest,  of  aversion  to 
it,  of  resistance  against  its  claims,  of  suppres- 
sion of  the  remonstrances  of  conscience  in  its 
behalf,  is  to  leave  you  in  a  kind  of  neutral 
state,  impartial  to  admit  at  length  the  convic- 
tion that  now  it  is  high  time,  and  easily  con- 
vertible into  a  Christian  spirit?  Consider  that 
all  this  time  you  are  forming  the  habits  which, 
when  inveterately  established,  will  either  be 
invincibly  upon  you  through  life,  or  require  a 
mighty  wrench  to  emancipate  you.  This  re- 
fusal to  think,  this  revolting  from  any  attempt 
at  self-examination,  this  averting  of  your  atten- 
tion from  serious  books,  this  declining  to  seek 
the  divine  favor  and  assistance  by  prayer,  this 
10 


102  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

projecting  of  schemes   bearing    no     regard   to 
that  favor,  and  which    are   not  to  need  that  as- 
sistance, this  eagerness  to  seize  each  transitory 
pleasure,   this  preference   of  companions    who 
would  like  you  the  worse  if  they  thought  you 
feared  God  or  cared  for  your  eternal  welfare, — 
these  dispositions,  prolonged  in  a  succession  of 
your  willing  acquiescences  in  ihcm,  will  grow 
into  a  settled  constitution    of  your  soul,  which 
will    thus   become    its    own    inexorable  tyrant. 
The  habit  so  forming    will    draw  into  it  all  the 
affections,  the  workings  of  imagination,  and  the 
trains  of  thought ;   will  so  possess  itself  of  them 
that  in  it  alone  they    will    live,  and    move,   and 
have  their  being.     It  will   have  a  strong,  unre- 
mitting propensity  to  grow  entire,  so  as  to  leave 
nothing   unpreoccupied    in    the    mind,    for  any 
opposing   agent  to  take    hold   on,   in   order   to 
counteract  it ;   as  if  it  were  instinctively  appre- 
hensive of  the  effect  of  protests  from  conscience, 
or  visitings  from  the  powers  of  heaven,  or  inti- 
mations from  the  realm  of  death;  and  therefore 
intent  on   forminir  the  sentiments  of  the  soul  to 
such  a  consistence  and   coalition,  as  shall  leave 
none  of  them  free  to  desert  at  the  voice  of  these 
summoners. 

And  if  you  would  reflect,  you  would  be   sen- 
sible that,  in  effect,  you  wish  the  case  to  be  just 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  103 

SO.  Do  not  practise  any  dissimulation  with 
yourself  on  the  suhject.  In  making  the  resolu- 
tion that  soiuet'uiic,  (and,  now,  honestly,  is  not 
that  a  tini'}  willinuly  reiiarded  as  far  off?)  that 
someiinie  you  will  apply  yourself  to  religion, 
you  |)lainly  intend  that  you  will  nut  he  relig- 
ious, that  you  will  be  estratiged  from  religion, 
till  then.  But,  in  resolving  that  it  shall  not 
command  you,  you  necessarily  must  wish  that 
neither  shall  it  disturb  you.  You  wish  that, 
during  all  tlie  time,  no  interfering,  opposing, 
alarming  principle  may  abide  in  your  mind  ; 
because  you  desire  to  enjoy  fully,  and  in  peace, 
the  kind  of  happiness  which  you  are  to  exclude 
religion  in  order  to  enjoy.  You  are  wishing, 
then,  in  effect,  that  your  affections  and  tastes 
may  be  entirely  in  harmony  with  a  system  of 
life  devoid  of  religion,  that  your  judgment  may 
accommodate  itself  not  to  condemn  your  pro- 
ceeding, and  that  your  conscience  should  either 
be  beguiled  to  acquiesce,  or  repose  in  a  long 
deep  sleep.  That  is  to  say,  while  you  are  re- 
solvincr  that  at  some  advanced  period  you  will 
be  religious,  you  are  also  resolving  that,  during 
the  long  preceding  time,  you  will  yield  yourself 
to  a  process  for  consolidating  those  very  habits, 
which  will  fix  your  mind  in  a  confirmed  an- 
tipathy to  religion.     You  are  intending  to  enter 


104  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

at  last  on  consecrated  ground,  and  yet  are  sur- 
rendering yourself  to  a  power,  which  will  hold 
you  back  with  the  grasp  of  a  fiend  when  you 
attempt  to  approach  its  border.  You  presume 
that  the  latter  stage  of  your  journey  shall  be  an 
ascent  to  heaven,  and  yet,  in  this  earlier  one, 
you  deliberately  choose  a  track  in  which  you 
can  calculate  how  each  downward  step  goes  in 
aggravation  of  the  arduousnessof  that  ascent,  if 
you  shall  indeed  ever  attempt  it ;  as  if  a  man 
who  had  to  reach  the  summit  of  a  vast  moun- 
tain, and  might  do  it  on  one  side  by  a  long, 
gradual,  and  comparatively  gentle  declivity, 
should  prefer  essaying  it  on  that  other  side, 
where,  descending  first  to  a  great  depth  to 
reach  its  base,  he  must  then  climb  its  preci- 
pices. Whatever  I  am  now  gaining,  he  might 
say  to  himself,  in  the  way  of  pleasant  indul- 
gence, in  this  descent,  is  so  much  that  I  shall 
find  to  have  been  gained  against  me  by  the 
difficulty  on  yonder  steep. 

It  may  be  easy  for  you  to  have  credit  with 
yourself  in  denying,  in  a  light  inconsiderate 
way,  that  you  are  actually  adopting  a  plan  of 
such  monstrous  absurdity.  You  will  say,  that 
you  are  far  from  being  conscious  of  any  wish  to 
aggravate  the  future  difficulty  of  applying  your 
mind  in  good  earnest  to  religion.     But  this  is 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  105 

an  evasion,  of  the  thouglitlessness  or  disingen- 
uousness  of  which  yon  ought  to  be  more  than 
ashamed.  You  are  bound  to  consider,  that  in 
adopting  a  plan,  you  are  accountable  for  every 
thing  which  is  necessarily  involved  in  it.  And 
when  your  plan  is  that  of  spending  an  indefi- 
nite but  large  portion  of  your  life  exempt  from 
religion,  you  necessarily  wish  to  have  the  unal- 
loyed benefit  of  your  privilege.  (But  what 
terms  I  am  using  !)  That  clear  advantage  you 
cannot  have  if  invaded  by  convictions,  if  har- 
assed by  conscience,  if  kept  in  awe  of  the  in- 
visible Observer,  if  lightened  upon  by  intima- 
tions of  a  judgment  to  come.  You  necessarily 
wish  an  immunity  I'rom  all  this,  in  the  prosecu- 
tion of  your  scheme.  But  therefore,  by  impli- 
cation, you  wish  for  that  which  alone  can  so 
exempt  you  ;  and  that  is  no  other  than  such  a 
hardened  slate  of  mind,  such  an  oblivion  habit- 
ually, and  such  a  power  of  defiance  occasion- 
ally, as  will  constitute,  when  fully  confirmed,  a 
most  fatal  aversion  and  unadaptedness  to  that 
transfer  of  your  thoughts  and  affections  to  re- 
ligion, on  which  you  are  presuming  as  the  ul- 
timate resource. 

And    it    is    probable  that,  if   you    had  self- 
observation  enough,   you   might   perceive    this 
process  toward   a  confirmed   state  is  going  on. 
10* 


106  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

Have  you  no  consciousness  that  the  last  two  or 
three  years  of  your  neglect  of  religion  have 
rendered  your  disinclination  to  it  more  posi- 
tive ?  May  there  not  be  a  more  sensible  re- 
action against  its  remonstrances  1  If  the  earlier 
feeling  was  that  of  mere  carelessness  about  the 
subject,  has  it  in  no  degree  changed  to  the 
stronger  one  of  aversion  ?  Perhaps  a  serious 
book,  (like  this  of  the  Rise  and  Progress  of 
Religion,)  which  would  at  a  former  time  have 
been  lightly  put  aside,  as  what  no  way  con- 
cerned you,  would  now  be  regarded  with  a 
pointed  sentiment  of  dislike,  almost  of  hostility, 
as  against  an  ungracious  intruder,  come,  like 
the  ancient  prophet  to  the  impious  king,  '*  to 
speak  no  good  of  you,  but  evil."  Perhaps  you 
find  that  you  can  more  promptly  set  aside  any 
scruples  of  conscience  that  rise  to  obstruct  you 
in  the  way  of  your  inclinations.     And  perhaps,  1 

as  a  reward — an  advantage,  do  you  deem  it  ? — 
of  this  boldness,  you  are  now  seldomer  incom- 
moded by  such  scruples.  So  that,  though  your 
feelings  clash  more  unequivocally  with  the  dic- 
tates of  religion  when  it  does  arrest  your  atten- 
tion, you  are  stronger  to  resist,  and  more  ex- 
pert to  elude,  and  suffer  on  the  whole  less  of 
the  trouble  of  its  interference. 

This  is  quite  the  natural  course ;  but  you 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  107 

ought  to  be  aware  of  its  progress.  If  you  ab- 
solutely will  proceed  on  this  plan,  of  retaining 
a  purpose  in  favor  of  religion,  but  deferring  it 
to  some  future  distant  time,  I  wish  you  would 
be  induced  to  keep  yourself  apprized  of  its 
effect  in  you,  by  making  now  and  then  an  ex- 
periment, in  the  way  of  test,  on  the  temper  of 
your  mind.  Will  you  be  advised  to  take  occa- 
sionally some  very  serious  and  cogent  book  on 
the  subject  of  personal  religion,  the  one  just 
named,  or  any  other,  or  some  peculiarly  solemn 
part  of  the  Bible  ;  to  read  it  a  little  while,  and 
watch  in  what  manner  your  inmost  feeling  re- 
sponds to  it  ?  Do  this  again  after  an  interval, 
and  observe  whether  the  displacency,  the  re- 
pugnance, of  your  heart,  be  less, — whether  it 
be  not  sensibly  more.  In  an  hour  when  you 
are  left  alone,  with  a  perfecr  freedom  to  remain 
for  a  while  in  this  retirement,  recollect  the  duty 
of  approaching  your  heavenly  Father,  with 
thanks,  confessions,  and  supplications :  and 
observe  the  movement  of  your  soul  under  this 
thought  in  this  opportune  hour.  Do  the  same 
in  subsequent  opportunities,  and  see  whether 
the  indisposition  be  not  increased  rather  than 
diminished.  And  if  the  fact  be  so,  what  a 
melancholy  phenomenon  ;  a  little,  dependent 
spirit  voluntarily  receding  from  its  beneficent 


108  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

Creator  ;  directing  its  progress  away  from  the 
eternal  source  of  light,  and  life,  and  joy  ;  and 
that  on  a  vain  presumption  of  being  under  the 
comet's  law  of  returning  at  last  to  the  sun  !  In 
a  similar  manner,  at  successive  intervals,  try 
the  effect,  on  the  temperament  of  your  mind, 
of  some  remembered  example  of  eniinent  piety 
in  youth,  of  the  recollection  of  former  youthful 
associates  dead,  or  of  the  solemn  idea  of  your 
own  death,  and  your  continual  approximation 
toward  it ;  and  see  whether,  under  these  aj)pli- 
cations,  there  will  not  be  betrayed,  in  the  habit 
of  your  feelings,  an  increasing  alienation  from 
religion.  And  yet  you  are  the  person  to  in- 
dulge an  easy  confidence,  that,  after  you  shall 
have  gone  on  many  years  thus  confirming  the 
estrangement  and  aversion  from  it,  you  shall 
easily  turn  to  it  as  your  best  friend  ! 

Might  it  not  be  well  to  enforce  it  on  your- 
self as  a  rule.  That  this  your  resolution  to  be 
religious  sometime,  shall  be  distinctly  recalled 
to  mind  in  each  successive  instance  of  your 
doing  what  tends  to  its  frustration?  When  you 
find  yourself  making  an  effort  to  banish  the 
shade  of  pensive  feeling,  or  grave  reflection, 
which  any  circumstance  of  the  time  may  have 
bad  power  to  throw  ^over  you,  say  to  yourself, 
It  is  I,   nevertheless,  that  am  to  be  religious, 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  109 

and  therefore  to  cherish  such  thoughts  and 
emotions,  in  a  season  yet  to  come.  If  you  per- 
ceive yourself  carefully  avoiding  "  the  house 
of  mourning,"  even  though  it  be  your  friends 
that  are  visited  there  with  sickness  or  death, 
say,  again,  I  am  one  day,  however,  to  entertain 
and  welcome  that  religion  which  would  be 
there,  at  this  time,  enforced  on  me  with  such 
powerful  admonition.  When  you  are  entering 
a  gay  thoughtless  party,  to  mingle  in  such  a 
hilarity  as  any  visitings  of  religious  reflection 
would  quell,  say  to  yourself.  That  very  thing 
which  would  freeze  this  animation  of  theirs  and 
mine,  shall  after  a  while  be  the  grand  solace  of 
my  heart ;  and  this  is  the  way  I  am  taking  to 
prepare  myself  for  its  being  so  !  Ifyougoso 
far  as  to  endure  voluntarily  and  without  repug- 
nance, society  where  serious  subjects  and  pious 
men  are  turned  to  jest,  and  the  most  awful 
names  taken  in  vain,  say,  I  am  training  myself 
here,  through  familiarity  with  irreligion,  to  give 
my  utmost  reverence  and  affection  to  that  of 
which  I  am  thus  abetting  the  scorn  and  profan- 
ation. If  you  are  projecting  a  scheme  for  the 
occtipation  and  satisfaction  of  a  considerable 
portion  of  your  life,  but  cast  upon  a  principle 
and  plan  evidently  unfavorable  to  your  spiritual 
welfare,  reflect  on  it,   and  say  again.  There  is 


110  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

another  sclieme  to  be  afterwards  undertaken, 
into  which  I  shall  pass  with  all  the  advantage 
of  having  wholly  excluded  the  care  of  it  from 
this  prior  one:  when  my  lighter  juvenile  un- 
concern about  relicrion  shall  have  settled  into 
an  utter  estrangement,  as  a  part  of  the  habit 
confirmed  through  my  long  and  complete  en- 
grossment  by  a  worldly  project,  then  I  shall 
need  but  one  touch  of  conviction,  but  one  re- 
collection of  my  former  vow,  but  one  act  of  my 
will,  to  throw  my  spirit  free,  and  become  relig- 
ious enough  for  death  and  for  heaven. 

I  repeat  to  you,  that  by  this  course  of  pro- 
crastination, this  scheme  of  reversionary  piety, 
you  are  not  simply  losing  so  much,  with  regard 
to  the  greatest  affair,  but  are  also  taking  strong 
security  against  yourself  that  you  shall  not  save 
the  remainder.  The  worthless  or  noxious 
growth  which  you  suffer  to  overspread  the  first 
large  division  of  your  allotted  tract  of  time,  is 
continually  extending  its  roots  far  forward,  and 
will  scatter  its  seeds  thickly  over  all  the  space 
beyond.  Consider  how  well,  even  at  your  age, 
you  are  informed  of  it  as  a  truth,  that  whatever 
entwines  itself  with  the  youthful  feelings  main- 
tains a  strange  tenacity,  and  seems  to  insinuate 
into  the  vitality  of  the  being.  How  important 
to  watch   lest  what  is  thus  combining  with  its 


LTVFNG  FOR   1  MM"  iRTALITY.  HI 

life,  should  contain  a  principle  of  moral  death  ! 
Consider,  that  in  this  earlier  period  yon  are  pe- 
culiarly disposed  to  entertain  social  partialities, 
are  perhaps  giving  yourself  to  companionship 
and  friendships,  or  contracting  more  intimate 
relations,  which  must  have  an  important  influ- 
ence on  the  growing  formation  of  your  mind 
into  its  decided  character,  and  on  the  conse- 
quent tenor  of  your  life.  Now  when  this  so- 
cial attraction  combines  several  parties  destitute 
of  religion,  they  are  in  effect  giving  mutual 
pledges  never  to  be  religious  ;  since  they  are 
giving  and  receiving  the  whole  influence  of 
their  friendship  to  fix  their  minds  in  that  state 
in  which  they  are  at  present  pleased  with  one 
another  ;  that  is  to  say,  in  a  state  of  aversion  to 
religion.  And  supposing  that  each  of  them 
were,  nevertheless,  like  you,  intending  to  be 
religious  sometime,  we  cannot  well  conceive 
any  fairer  occasion  for  the  scoft'  of  a  malig- 
nant spirit,  than  to  see  them  thus  all  in  a 
league  to  frustrate  what  each  of  them  believes 
he  intends. 

This  same  intention,  you  have  no  reason  to 
doubt,  has  been  entertained  in  earlier  years,  by 
many  whom  you  now  see  advanced  to  the  mid- 
dle or  the  decline  of  life,  without  havincr  done 
any    thing    toward    its    accomplishment.      Yet 


112  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

they  were,  in  their  time,  as  confident  as  you 
are  now.  Should  not  this  alarm  you  ?  Some 
of  them  may  have  yielded  up  the  design,  not 
by  any  express  act  of  renouncement,  but  insen- 
sibly, in  the  gradual  hardening  of  their  con- 
sciences, their  complete  immersion  in  the 
world,  and  assimilation  to  its  spirit ;  with  the 
addition,  in  too  many  cases,  of  the  practice  of 
some  more  positive  kind  of  sin.  Many  of  them, 
however,  are  perhaps  still  retaining  the  pur- 
pose, inert  and  buried  under  an  accumulation 
of  repressive  habits ;  like  a  seed  artificially 
kept  torpid  in  order  that  it  may  be  quickened 
into  germination  at  a  preferable  time.  The 
consciousness  that  they  are  mortal,  and  must 
be  forced  at  last  out  of  all  that  now  occupies 
and  pleases  them,  is  soothed  to  repose  in  this 
presumption,  that  they  shall  bring  a  reserved 
expedient  into  action,  before  the  neglect  of  it 
be  fatal.  But  answer  honestly,  do  you  think  it 
probable  that  they  will  ?  Do  you  expect,  if  you 
should  live  to  see  them  forward  a  few  years 
further — do  you  expect  to  see  them  withdraw- 
ing their  engrossed  affections,  breaking  asunder 
their  inveterate  habits,  and  doing  a  great  thing 
which  they  have  systematically  and  wilfully 
prepared  themselves  not  to  do,  that  is,  devoting 
themselves  to  God  and  the  care  of  their  salva- 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  113 

tion  ?  Perhaps  you  have  allowed  yourselves  to 
imagine  that  you,  after  having  made  a  consid- 
erable progress  in  years,  shall  become,  at  every 
advance,  proportionally  more  and  more  sensible 
of  the  shortening  of  life,  and  shall  necessarily 
behold  nearer  the  visage  of  death,  presented 
througrh  a  clearer  medium,  and  with  enlar^incr 
and  more  defined  features.  How  can  it,  you 
may  have  said,  be  otherwise,  in  the  exorcise  of 
mere  common  sense,  than  that  this  approach 
toward  the  end  should  aggravate  upon  me  the 
cogency  of  my  grand  duty?  Do  then  look 
again  at  the  multitude  of  examples  around  you, 
and  see  what  avails  them  this  obvious  arithmetic 
of  time.  You  see  persons  with  whose  names 
you  and  your  companions,  with  a  tacit  pleasure 
of  contrast  in  your  favor,  couple  the  epithet 
"  old,"  still  as  heedlessly  and  confidently  as 
yourselves,  reckoning  on  time  enough  yet,  to 
continue  deferring  the  grand  business  without 
peril  of  its  being  left  undone.  If  their  youthful 
"  trust  in  their  own  heart,"  that  they  would  ul- 
timately applv  themselves  to  the  indispensable 
business,  fi.X'  i  that  determination  on  about 
some  given. Vpoint  or  period  in  their  future  life, 
they  can  pass,  or  perhaps  have  passed  that  pe- 
riod, with  the  same  iticility  of  neglect  as  any 
foiiuei  one,  fiuviiug  nolinng  to  stop  them  there 
11 


114  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITr. 

with  the  peremptory  exaction   to  perform  theif 
vow.     The  lying  spirit  which  had  promised  to 
meet  them   at   the   assigned  spot,   to   conduct 
them  thenceforward  toward  heaven,  appears  not 
OH   the  ground   when  they  arrive  there,  unless 
to  tell  them  that  another  stage,  still  further  on, 
will  be  more  advantageous  for  commencing  the 
enterprise.     You  look  at  the  marks  of  time  on 
their   countenances,   recollect  them  perhaps  as 
in  mature  or  middle  age  when  you  were  in  in- 
fancy,  and   wonder   they  can   yield  themselves 
to   such    an   imposition  ;  and  all  this  without  a 
single  reflection,  that  you   are  putting  yourseJf 
in  the  train   of  the  same  delusion.     How  can 
they  act  so,  you   say,  when  I  feel  so  certain  of 
the  justness  of  my   determination  to  act  other- 
wise, on   the  strength  of  my  conviction   of  the 
ultimate  necessity  of  religion  ?    Be  you  assured 
there  is  no  more  fatal  betrayer  than  a  right  and 
excellent  principle  adopted,   but  consigned  to 
future  time  and  more  favorable  inclination  for 
beincr  carried  into  action.     The  consciousness 
that  you   are  certainly   keeping   a  good  resolu- 
tion, only  deferred  to   await  a  "  more  conven- 
ient season,"  will  help  you   to   indulge  a   falla- 
cious security,  while  every  season  for  accom- 
plishing  it   is   passing   away.      Through    one 
period  of  your  time  after  another,  it  will  appear 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  115 

to  you  infallibly  efficacious  for  the  next  ;  and 
no  period  will  come  as  that  from  which  you 
cannot  look  forward  to  still  another.  And  this 
your  purpose,  suspended  as  it  were  in  advance 
over  your  course,  as  a  malign  imitation,  by  in- 
fernal art,  of  the  star  which  the  sages  followed 
to  find  the  Saviour  of  the  world,  will  probably 
lead  you  on,  still  confiding  that  it  must  stand 
arrested  at  the  spot  where  you  shall  accept  the 
grace  of  that  Redeemer,  till  you  are  drawn  to 
a  precipice,  where  your  deluder  will  vanish  and 
you  will  fall. 

All  the  latter  course  of  this  pleading  has  pro- 
ceeded on  the  supposition  that  you  Tway  have 
a  protracted  life.  It  has  been  an  attempt  to 
represent  to  you,  that  even  if  you  might  be  al- 
lowed to  assume  a  very  strong  probability,  little 
short  of  certainty,  of  reaching  the  full  term  of 
human  life — nay,  that  if  you  were  certain  you 
shall,  your  scheme  of  exempting  its  earlier  por- 
tion from  religion,  on  a  promise  to  yourself  and 
to  God  of  taking  that  for  your  chief  concern  at 
a  more  advanced  stage,  would  still  be  absurd, 
and  wicked,  and  most  dangerous.  But  [  warn 
you  again,  do  not  so  criminally  trifle  with  your 
own  reason  as  to  proceed  on  any  such  calcula- 
tion, in  sight  and  in  contempt  of  the  thousand 


116  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

instances  of  your  fellow-mortals  dying  in  youth, 
and  in  the  immediately  following  stage. 

Now,  will  you,  my  young  friend,  lay  such 
considerations  to  heart;  or  will  you  rather  have 
it  to  remember,  perhaps  when  all  too  late,  that 
they  were  pressed  upon  you  in  vain? 


in     @ 


CHAPTER    VI. 

AFFECTING   PORTRAIT    OF   A   MAN  OF    THE    WORLD. 

This  expostulation,  conceived  as  what  might 
have  been  addressed  to  some  one  of  the  many 
young  persons  who  may,  in  various  times  and 
places,  have  had  their  attention  drawn  for  a 
moment  to  this  treatise  of  the  Rise  and  Pro- 
gress of  Religion,  and  averted  by  the  serious- 
ness of  its  purport,  has  been  prolonged  so  ex- 
ceedingly far  beyond  our  intention,  and  its  due 
proportion,  that  but  little  space  is  fairly  left  for 
exemplifying,  in  other  forms,  the  trains  of  in- 
structive reflection  that  might  take  rise  from 
imagining   what   has   happened   in   connexion 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  117 

with  the  book.  We  therefore  leave  it  for  an 
exercise  of  the  reader's  own  thoughts,  if  he 
should  deem  there  is  any  profit  in  such  an  em- 
ployment of  them,  to  imagine  in  what  manner  a 
variety  of  individuals,  each  a  specimen  of  the 
character  of  a  class,  may  be  supposed  to  have 
noticed  the  book  at  one  time  or  another ;  what 
feeling  was  excited  at  the  sight,  or  transient  in- 
spection, or  perusal  of  it ;  how  they  were 
affected  toward  its  subject,  so  inculcated  ;  what 
influence,  if  any,  it  had  on  their  determina- 
tions ;  and  to  conceive,  in  each  case  respec- 
tively, what  would  have  been  the  appropriate 
admonitions,  which  it  had  been  well  if  there 
had  been  any  intelligent  and  persuasive  friend 
opportunely  to  offer.  What  such  a  friend 
might  pertinently  have  said  in  any  of  those  in- 
stances, is  of  course  the  advice  or  remonstrance 
applicable  in  any  similar  cases,  occurring  now 
and  hereafter,  among  the  incalculably  numer- 
ous persons  whose  attention  must  be  attracted, 
more  or  less,  to  a  work  which  is  in  still  widen- 
ing circulation. 

Foregoing,  then,  the  design  of  specifying 
several  other  discriminated  examples,  we  will 
protract  this  discourse  only  a  little  further,  by 
supposing  one  more  instance ;  an  example, 
however,  of  a  character  unhappily  far  too  gen- 
ii* 


118  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

erally  prevalent  to  be  called  that  of  a  class. 
We  may  describe  the  person  as  a  mere  man  of 
the  world — yet  not  in  the  worst  sense  of  that 
designation  ;  for  we  do  not  suppose  him  an 
abandoned  profligate,  trampling  and  spurning 
the  most  obvious  rules  of  social  morality  ;  nor  a 
scoffer  at  religion  ;  nor  a  scorner,  in  a  virulent 
spirit,  of  pious  men  ;  but  devoted  to  this  world, 
idolizing  it  in  his  affections,  exerting  all  his  ac- 
tive energy  in  its  pursuits,  surrendering  his 
whole  being  to  mingle  with  its  interests  and  be 
conformed  to  its  temper  ;  and  therefore  habitu- 
ally forgetting  the  other  world,  and  all  the 
grand  economy  of  truths,  overtures,  means, 
preparations,  and  cares  relating  to  it.  He 
might  have  been  in  youth  just  the  same  kind  of 
person  as  the  one  expostulated  with  in  the  pre- 
ceding pages ;  we  are  supposing  him  past  that 
age,  and  all  that  belongs  peculiarly  to  its  char- 
acter ;  yet  not  necessarily  as  very  far  advanced 
in  life. 

It  cannot  have  failed  to  happen  that  many 
such  persons  have  been  accosted,  as  it  were, 
by  the  spirit  of  our  pious  and  benevolent  au- 
thor, in  the  vehicle  of  his  book.  If  we  may 
conjecture  that  fifty  thousand  copies  have  been 
diffused  among  all  orders  of  society,  and  have 
obtained,  through  choice  or  accident,  with  ap- 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  1  IQ 

probation  or  under  sufferance,  a  position  in  al- 
most so  many  abodes,  our  fancy  has  a  warrant 
to  figure  an  indefinite  variety  of  circumstances, 
under  which  these  volumes  have  fallen  in  con- 
tact with  such  men  of  the  world. 

There  may  have  been  the  case  of  such  a 
man's  unwittingly  laying  his  hand  on  the  book, 
as  one  of  a  number  which  had  been  left  him  by 
a  religious  parent,  opening  to  see  what  it  was, 
as  not  recognizing  it  by  its  exterior,  and  being 
smitten  with  something  like  an  electric  shock 
at  the  sudden  reflection,  that  for  ten,  or  twenty, 
or  thirty  years  since  that  parent's  death,  he  has 
been  no  better  for  this  or  any  other  religious 
book.  Another  such  man,  on  happening  to  fix 
his  eye  on  the  volume,  has  been  struck  with 
the  recollection,  inflicting  perhaps  a  twinge  of 
mental  pain,  that  there  was  a  time,  a  transient 
one,  long  since,  in  his  youth,  when  he  felt 
some  convictions  and  emotions  of  a  religious 
tendency  ;  and  procured  this  identical  book  in 
aid  of  those  salutary  movements  in  his  mind. 
Another  may  have  chanced  to  notice  it  among 
books,  which  a  better  care  than  his  had  pro- 
vided for  the  instruction  of  the  young  people  of 
his  own  family  ;  and  has  perhaps  had  the  mo- 
mentary thought — what,  then,  are  these  young 
men  and  women  to  be  reminded  of  religion, 
while /forget  it ?    Another  may  have  retained 


120  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

from  early  instruction,  accompanied  by  exam- 
ple, a  certain  impression,  resting  on  his  mind 
somewhat  like  a  superstition,  that  the  Sunday 
ought  to  be  in  some  degree  unlike  his  other 
days,  and  a  small  portion  of  it  given  to  serious 
reading;  and  in  looking  for  a  book  of  that 
character,  he  may  have  happened  to  take  this, 
and  to  read  enough  of  it  to  cause  him  a  disqui- 
eted consciousness,  or  a  suspicion  that  his  spirit 
and  habits  are  not  quite  in  the  right.  The 
case  may  have  occurred,  that  such  a  man  has 
caught  sight  of  this  book  in  the  recess  of  an 
apartment  where  he  and  others  were  waiting  to 
follow  a  dead  person  to  the  grave  ;  and  that, 
under  a  passing  gleam  of  right  apprehension 
and  kind  feeling,  he  internally  said.  The  Pro- 
gress of  Religion — I  hope  it  was  that  road  that 
the  deceased  took  in  his  way  to  the  world 
whither  he  is  gone,  for  else  it  were  ill  with 
him  now. 

It  may  seem  as  if  these  suppositions  do  not 
quite  agree  with  the  general  description  of  the 
character,  as  altogether  estranged  from  religion. 
Such  involuntary  and  transitory  excitements  of 
a  recognition  of  that  great  interest,  are  not, 
however,  incompatible  with  a  prevailing  deci- 
ded neglect  and  alienation  :  but,  in  truth,  the 
conjectures  may  justly  fall  into  a  less  charitable 
train.     We  supposed  the  cause  of  such  a  man's 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  121 

observing  that  the  book  had  been  offered  to  tlie 
attention  of  the  younger  branches  of  his  family, 
and  admittincr  a  slijiht  reflection  of  self-rebuke. 
But  it  is  not  less  likely  to  have  happened,  that 
a  man  of  this  character,  on  perceiving  such  a 
circumstance,  has  signified  displeasure  at  tliis 
expedient  for  rendering  the  happy  young  crea- 
tures prematurely  grave  and  melancholy,  ex- 
tinguishing, he  said,  their  delightful  vivacity, 
(which  would  soon  enough  be  repressed  by  the 
cares  and  troubles  of  life,)  by  unseasonable  ap- 
prehensions about  the  welfare  of  their  souls. 
It  is  no  improbable  case,  that  the  book  may 
have  come  in  the  way  of  such  a  man  just  about 
the  time  when  he  has  seen,  or  perhaps  experi- 
enced to  his  injury,  an  instance  of  want  of 
principle  in  some  person  making  high  preten- 
sions to  religion  ;  and  that  he  said,  with  irrita- 
tion and  a  frown,  I  think  I  may  as  well  let  this 
affair  of  religion  alone,  till  I  see  more  integrity 
in  those  who  profess  to  be  so  deep  in  it.  The 
main  matter  of  duty  is,  to  be  upright  in  our 
transactions;  and,  thank  God,  I  am  that  with- 
out making  any  canting  pretensions  to  saint- 
ship.  Another  man  of  this  description  may 
have  accidentally  looked  into  the  book  a  little 
while,  and  then  laid  it  aside,  evading  all  per- 
sonal application  with  the  thoughtless  senti- 
ment, That  is  all   very  well  for  persons  whose 


122  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

situation  allows  them  to  give  themselves  up  to 
retirement  and  thinking ;  but  men  like  me 
have  far  too  much  to  do  with  the  practical  busi- 
ness of  life  to  have  leisure  for  attending  to  the 
subject.  The  book  may  have  obtruded  itself 
on  the  notice  of  a  man  deliberating  whether  to 
add  a  new  worldly  undertaking  to  those  he  was 
involved  in  already,  an  undertaking  not  neces- 
sary, but  calculated  to  make  a  little  more  of  the 
world  his  own.  And  might  it  not  be  supposed 
that  such  a  monitory  intervention  might  con- 
tribute to  suspend  the  affirmative  decision,  by 
force  of  the  question  whether  this  concern,  of 
religion,  did  not  demand  to  take  precedence  of 
every  other  new  undertaking?  No;  the  ques- 
tion struck  but  feebly  on  his  mind  ;  the  sug- 
gestion was  easily  cleared  away  from  interfer- 
ence with  his  debating  thoughts  ;  religion  could 
be  attended  to  at  any  time  indifferently  ;  where- 
as now  or  never  was  the  time  for  the  project 
which  was  warming  his  desires.  The  book 
was  thrown  by,  and  the  subject  vanished. 

It  is  familiar  to  observation  that  men  of  the 
world  have  an  arrogant  estimate  of  worldly  wis- 
dom, though  the  sphere  of  its  objects  be  so 
limited,  and  the  term  of  its  employment  and 
profit  so  short.  Never  did  the  adepts  in  abstract 
philosophy,  or  in  science,  indulge  a  prouder 
consciousness  in  virtue  of  living  and  reigning 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  123 

in  the  intellectual  world,  than  these  men  do  on 
the  strength  of  beinu   shrewd  and   efficient  in 
the  judgment  and  conduct  ofafFairs.      Suj)pose, 
then,  one   of  them,   on    returning  from  a  place 
of  resort  and  competition,  where   he  has  excel- 
led in  the  discussion  or  transaction  of  some  of 
these  affairs,  to  have  been  led  by  any  chance  to 
open  such  a  book,  and  to  have   glanced  over   a 
few  sentences  or  paragraphs.      He  probably  did 
not  waste  even  his  contemjit  in  more  than  a  few 
brief  expressions   to   this  effect  : — Tiiese  men, 
all  for  religion,  talk  of  the  insignificance  of  what 
they  call  earthly  things,  the  vanity  of  the  world, 
the   Christian's   vocation   to   live  above   it,   the 
meanness  of  its   concerns  compared   with  their 
nobler  pursuits ;  and    all   the   while   they  know 
nothing  about  it.     Too  fantastic  and  feeble  for 
the  vigorous   activities  of  our  department,  let 
them  be  indulged  in  their  notion  that  they  have 
vastly  superior  employments   in  their  own.     It 
were   hard   to  deny   them   the  pleasure   of  de- 
claiming against  that  which  they  do  not  under- 
stand, and  in  which  they   would   make  a  miser- 
able figure  in  attempting  to  act  a  part.     Another 
man  of  the  worldly  character,  in   a   less  super- 
cilious temper,  may  be  supposed  to  have  looked 
a  little  into  the  book   with   a   feeling   like  this  : 
One  does  wish  one  could  manage  to  have  some 
commodious  sort  or  share  of  religion,  that  would 


124  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

not  cost  much  trouble,  and  would  put  one  in 
safety  as  to  future  consequences.  But  religion 
as  described  here^  meets  me  as  an  inquisitor 
and  a  tyrant.  It  would  force  a  judicial  investi- 
gation through  my  whole  soul,  and  that  only  to 
expose,  condemn,  and  affright  me  ;  insists  on 
some  strange  revolution  in  my  principles  and 
feelings  ;  demands  an  unconditional,  unlimited 
submission,  to  a  jurisdiction  which  will  leave 
nothing  within  me,  or  without  me,  at  my  own 
free  disposal  ;  and,  in  short,  insists  on  setting 
the  main  purposes  of  my  life  in  a  new  direc- 
tion. This  is  not  to  be  endured.  If  I  must  at 
last,  for  safety's  sake,  submit  on  such  terms, 
let  me  enjoy  my  exemption  as  long  as  I  can 
or  dare. 

But  a  man  of  the  world  may  be  a  formalist ; 
may  think  that  no  such  religion  can  ever  be 
necessary,  and  that  he  has  a  sufficient  one  in 
his  regular  performance  of  an  order  of  mere 
external  observances.  Somewhere,  no  doubt, 
there  is  a  copy  of  the  book  in  question  which 
such  a  man  has  inspected,  with  eyes  now  per- 
haps closed  for  ever  ;  and  we  can  figure  the 
aspect,  (though  the  pages  do  not  reflect  the 
image,)  of  alternate  disdain  and  indignation  at 
what  he  pronounced  to  be  rank  enthusiasm, 
with  self-congratulation  on   knowing  a  far  eas- 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  125 

ier  method  of  satisfying  the  requirements  of  hi3 
Creator. 

We  might  go  on  indefinitely  recounting,  in 
probable  conjecture,  the  modes  in  which  the 
worldly  spirit  has  been  affected  at  coming  in 
contact  with  this  vehicle  of  serious  admonition. 
And  what  a  manifestation  would  be  given  of 
the  nature  of  that  spirit,  if,  from  unknown  times 
and  places,  one  twentieth  part  would  be  recalled 
of  the  instances  in  which  its  quality  has  been 
the  most  remarkably  betrayed  under  such  a 
test.  We  will  describe  but  one  example  more. 
It  is  not  to  be  doubted  that  this  production  of 
pious  zeal  has  at  some  time  fallen  in  the  way 
of  a  person  who  had  continued  faithfully  devo- 
ted to  the  world  quite  to  old  age.  Perhaps  it 
met  his  notice  at  the  time  when  he  was  just 
upon  making  the  utmost  exertion  of  his  declin- 
ing strength,  and  with  an  eagerness  equal  to 
any  passion  of  his  youth,  to  accomplish  the 
concluding,  the  crowning  part,  of  a  long 
wrought  project  for  bringing  within  his  grasp  a 
material  acquisition  of  emolument  or  distinc- 
tion ;  in  other  words,  for  gaining  more  posses- 
sesions  against  the  day  of  losing  them,  and 
more  decorations  against  the  day  of  putting 
them  off.  And  perhaps  he  did  not  plainly  say, 
Religion,  with  all  that  depends  on  it,  must  take 
its  chance  ;  I  never  yet  have  been  disposed  to 
12 


126  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

forego  any  thing  for  its  sake,  nor  am  I  now. 
But  we  may  confidently  suppose  him  to  have 
said  in  effect,  I  must  at  all  events  complete  this 
affair  in  hand,  whatever  becomes  of  any  thing 
else.  And  who  knows  but  he  was  smitten  with 
death  before  either  the  momentous  something 
else  obtained  his  attention,  or  the  project,  for 
the  sake  of  which  he  refused  it,  was  accom- 
plished ?  Or  we  may  imagine  the  occurrence 
happening  to  a  man  in  a  more  prostrate  state  of 
feeling,  vt^hen  a  long  prosecuted  scheme  had 
failed,  too  late  in  his  life  for  him  to  form  a  new 
one  ;  or  about  the  time  that  increasingf  infirm- 
ity  had  constrained  him  to  the  dreaded  task  of 
making  his  will ;  or  when  he  had  recently  seen 
his  most  trusty  co-operator,  or  his  nearest  rela- 
tion, of  his  own  age,  or  even  the  last  of  his 
children,  sink  into  the  grave.  And  would  it 
be  too  hard  upon  human  nature,  or  an  unchar- 
itable judgment  of  the  temper  of  a  mind  grown 
old  in  devotedness  to  the  world,  to  suppose 
that,  even  in  circumstances  like  these,  the  man 
still  could  not  resolve  on  so  serious  a  thing  as 
attention  to  religion  ?  No,  we  can  believe  that 
he  revolted  from  the  urgent  enforcement  of  the 
subject,  felt  as  if  any  other  way  of  disposing  of 
it  were  preferable  to  that  of  thinking  of  it,  and 
threw  aside  the  book.  He  had  recourse  to 
some  expedients  of  change  and  amusement,  to 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  127 

relieve  his  drooping  spirits  and  darkening  days ; 
or,  perhaps,  he  made  a  strife  to  force  his  de- 
caying powers  to  some  farther  and  superfluous 
exertions  in  the  world's  business.  It  may  even 
be  conceived,  that  the  very  terms  "  Rise  and 
Progress,"  suggesting  the  idea  of  long  and  la- 
borious continuance,  excited  a  gloomy  sense  of 
the  want  of  commensurateness  between  such  a 
lengthened  process,  and  his  now  shortened 
life  ;  and  that,  through  a  lamentable  perversity, 
the  sadness  of  this  consideration,  instead  of 
alarming  him  to  an  instant  application  to  the 
grand  concern,  made  him  the  more  recoil  from 
it,  and  but  added  to  the  infatuation  of  his  con- 
suming the  short  remainder  of  his  life,  as  he 
had  consumed  all  before. 


128  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 


CHAPTER    VII. 

REMONSTRANCES  AND  EXPOSTULATIONS  AGAINST 
THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  WORLDLING,  ADDRESSED  TO 
HIS  CONSCIENCE  FROM  THE  MOST  WEIGHTY 
CONSIDERATIONS. 

Now,  in  each  of  all  tliese  instances,  an  intel- 
ligent Christian  friend  might  have  remonstrated 
in  terms  specially  adapted  to  the  individual's 
state  of  mind,  modifying  the  general  argument 
for  religion  to  meet  the  cast  of  irreligious  feel- 
ing in  the  particular  case.  And  a  discerning 
and  skilful  pleader  in  this  good  cause  may 
sometimes  seize  upon  the  peculiar  mode  of 
feeling,  in  such  a  manner  as  to  turn  it  to  ac- 
count, availing  himself  of  it  to  give  his  remon- 
strance something  of  the  point  and  appropria- 
tion of  the  argumentum  ad  hominem.  But  we 
shall  content  ourselves  with  a  short  address  of 
the  nature  of  a  plain  general  expostulation,  ap- 
plicable to  the  general  qualities  of  the  wordly 
character. 

It  is  true,  tha^t  the  spirit  required  in  any 
effort  so  directed,  is  not  a  little  repressed  by  a 
sentiment  partaking  of  despondency.     There  is 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  ]29 

no  evading  the  thought,  Why  should  words, 
and  arguments,  and  images  of  unseen  things, 
and  adjurations,  be  expended  on  that  man,  on 
those  men  ?  Tlicy  will  continue  the  same. 
Why  should  religion,  like  Cassandra,  waste 
her  dictates  and  premonitions  on  a  hopeless 
determination  to  the  wrong  ?  How  can  it  be 
worth  while  to  be  trying,  as  if  it  had  so  much 
as  even  the  uncertainty  of  an  experiment,  how 
many  missiles  will  rebound  from  a  rock,  or  dis- 
appear in  a  swamp  ;  or  how  many  times  the 
taper  may  burn  out  in  the  vain  attempt  to 
kindle  a  fire  in  materials  which  contain  no 
fuel  ? 

But  we  would  wish  to  turn  this  very  fact  it- 
self, of  the  dispirited  sentiment  which  damps 
the  Christian  pleader's  efforts  to  press  religion 
on  the  attention  of  devoted  men  of  the  world, 
into  a  topic  of  admonition  to  them.  How 
comes  it  to  pass,  we  might  say  to  them,  that  a 
person,  whose  own  mind  is  possessed  with  the 
most  absolute  and  mighty  conviction  of  the  im- 
portance of  religion,  cannot  help  feeling  it  near- 
ly a  forlorn  attempt  to  awaken  any  sense  of 
that  importance  in  you  ?  Has  he  good  cause 
for  this  despondence  ?  Is  it  his  experience,  his 
just  estimate,  of  the  character  of  your  minds 
and  habits,  that  makes  him  feel  so  ;  and  does 
12* 


130  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

your  self-knowledge  tell  you  it  would  be  too 
sanguine  for  him  to  feel  otherwise  ?  Is  it,  then, 
a  fact,  that  you  are  hardened  into  a  settled  in- 
sensibility to  the  things  which  most  vitally  and 
profoundly  concern  you  ?  Have  you  really  a 
power,  and  that  power  so  complete  that  it  is 
effectual  almost  without  an  effort,  and  through 
the  inert  force  of  habit,  to  meet  with  indiffer- 
ence or  defiance  the  aspects  of  whatever  is  the 
most  sublime,  most  amiable,  or  most  tremen- 
dous, in  existence?  When  mercy,  in  a  celes- 
tial form,  approaches  to  apply  to  your  soul  the 
redeeming  principle  without  which  it  will  per- 
ish, can  you  turn  it  away,  coolly  saying.  Anoth- 
er time,  perhaps, — or  perhaps  never?  And  in 
refusing  it  access,  do  you  feel  the  satisfaction  of 
a  person  who  has  promptly  and  easily  dismissed 
an  unreasonable  applicant ;  regarding  it  as  an 
arrogant  requirer,  rather  than  as  a  benefactor 
offering  you  inestimable  good  ?  Do  you  feel, 
in  thus  being  out  of  the  power  of  religion,  a 
gratifying,  sense  of  immunity  from  one  of  the 
evils  which  are  infesting  mankind  ;  that  there 
is  one  malady  against  which  your  mental  con- 
stitution is  fortified,  while  some  of  your  fellow- 
mortals,  attacked  by  it,  are  objects  almost  of 
your  pity  ?  And  do  you  account  this  exemp- 
tion, and  carry  it  upon  you  through  the  com- 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  131 

merce  of  life,  as  3.  privilege  of  your  class,  which 
you  as  rightfully  maintain  as  any  other  advan- 
tacre,  and  with  which  it  were  little  better  thaa 
impertinence  for  any  one  to  interfere,  by  rep- 
resentations in  favor  of  that  from  which  you 
thus  walk  at  liberty  ?  If  this  be  the  estab- 
lished condition  of  your  minds,  it  is  what 
ought  to  alarm  you,  like  that  deadly  calm 
which,  in  some  climates,  would  be  an  omen 
to  you  of  the  subterranean  thunder,  and  of  the 
ground  heaving  and  rending  under  your  feet. 
But  at  the  same  time,  it  is  what  may  well 
cause  a  Christian  friend  to  be  despondent  of 
the  efficacy  of  expostulation. 

He  is  so,  because  he  is  aware  that  there  is 
nothing  within  your  minds  adequately,  or  in 
any  tolerable  degree,  corresponding  to  the  im- 
portant and  solemn  terms  which  he  must  em- 
ploy. He  must  speak  of  the  soul,  redemption, 
faith,  holiness,  conformity  to  the  divine  image; 
of  heaven  and  hell,  of  judgment  and  eternity. 
But  these  are  insignificant  sounds,  unless,  when 
pronounced,  they  strike  upon  conceptions  al- 
ready in  the  mind,  which  answer  to  their  im- 
port, conceptions  which  contain  in  them,  so  to 
speak,  the  ideal  substance  of  what  is  meant  by 
these  signs.  And  he  can  perceive  too  well 
that  this  whole  order  of  ideas  has  but  a  crude, 


132  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

undefined,  obscure,  and  feeble  formation  in 
your  understanding.  The  most  solemn  call  of 
these  great  words,  is  replied  to  with  but  a  faint 
and  equivocal  recognition  from  within.  It  is 
as  if  the  names  were  called  of  a  company  of 
persons  asleep,  who  answer  without  the  dis- 
tinctness of  consciousness,  and  some  of  them 
not  at  all.  Nay,  might  not  men  of  the  world 
be  found  in  such  a  condition  of  the  intellect, 
that  these  words,  addressed  to  raise  the  corres- 
ponding ideas  in  it,  would  be  nearly  like  calling 
aloud,  in  a  field  of  the  dead,  the  names  which 
are  inscribed  on  tlieir  tombs?  Change  the 
subject,  and  see  the  difl^erence.  There  are 
many  terms  which  have  their  appropriate  ideas 
most  perfectly  formed  in  your  understanding ; 
distinct,  palpable,  and,  in  full  dimension.  Let 
the  denominations  be  pronounced  of  divers 
kinds  and  values  of  worldly  property,  of  meth- 
ods and  rules  of  transactincr  business,  of  the 
different  stations  in  society,  with  their  respec- 
tive relations  and  circumstances,  or  of  the  ma- 
terials and  accommodations  for  gratifying  the 
senses  ;  let  some  of  these  be  named,  and  in- 
stantly the  corresponding  ideas  arise  in  the 
mind,  substantial  and  distinct ;  so  that  the  ut- 
terer  of  the  designations  knows  he  can  do  with 
the  auditor  whatever  depends  simply  on   his 


LIVING  FOR  IMMOR'J'ALITY.  133 

having  a  right  notion  of  the  things.  But  when 
you  hear  some  of  these  terms  expressive  of  the 
most  important  meanings  that  could  ever  enter 
into  human  intelligence,  how  confused,  un- 
couth, and  inane,  how  spiritless  and  powerless, 
are  the  forms  of  thought  wiiich  glimmer  on 
your  apprehension  !  It  is  as  if  words  pronoun- 
ced to  evoke  mighty  spirits,  were  answered 
only  by  the  coming  of  the  owls,  bats,  and  in- 
sects, of  the  twilight. 

The  religious  monitor  is  tempted  to  despond, 
again,  because  he  sees  that  your  devotion  to 
the  world  is  established  into  system,  almost 
into  mechanism.  A  very  young  person  may 
be  frivolous  and  thoughtless  to  the  last  degree  ; 
but  he  is  variable  ;  his  present  impressions  may 
quickly  give  place  to  new  ones;  he  may  aban- 
don one  favorite  pursuit  for  a  different  one; 
and  should  religion  attempt  to  seize  him  at  an 
interval  of  these  versatile  movements,  it  will  in- 
deed have  to  contend  with  his  levity,  and  the 
radical  aversion  in  his  nature  to  sacred  sub- 
jects, but  not  with  a  set  of  habits  grown  to  a 
firm  consistence,  in  a  shape,  we  might  say  an 
organization,  adapted  to  keep  his  whole  soul  in 
one  steady  mode  of  adhesion  to  the  world. 
This  latter  is  a  description  of  the  condition  of 
many  of  you,  its  devotees.     There  is  no  longer 


134  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

any  question  whether,  or  in  what  way,  you  shall 
be  wholly  surrendered  to  it.  The  habitual  fact 
has  taken  the  matter  out  of  the  province  of  vo- 
lition. That  you  faithfully  adhere,  in  spirit,  to 
the  world,  that  you  live  for  it,  to-day,  and  to- 
morrow, and  each  ensuing  day,  and  wherever 
you  may  be,  seems  as  much  of  course  as  that 
bodily  you  walk  on  its  surface.  And  not  only 
are  you  under  this  principle  of  determination  to 
it  as  your  general  object,  but  you  have  a  settled 
adjustment  of  feeling  and  estimate  to  its  diver- 
sities respectively.  You  have  your  maxims,  as- 
sociations, and  affections,  in  an  orderly  state  to 
meet  and  coalesce  with  them  all  and  each. 
And  your  general  worldly  spirit  preserves  a 
consistency  of  its  special  action  throughout  all 
the  detail  of  its  objects ;  the  manner  in  which 
the  predominant  law  operates  with  respect  to 
each,  agreeing  with  its  mode  of  operation  in  all 
the  others.  Thus,  you  are  men  of  the  world 
not  only  by  one  general  sentiment  of  devoted- 
ness  to  it,  but  in  a  systematic  appropriation  of 
that  sentiment  to  various  and  numberless  par- 
ticulars. While  you  cleave  to  the  world  gen- 
erally, we  may  be  allowed,  the  figure  of  saying, 
that  each  fibre,  each  nerve,  of  your  moral  na- 
ture, has  its  own  particular  point  of  application 
to  this  your  sovereign  good ;  and   all  pervaded 


LIVING   FOR  LMMORTALITY.  135 

and  kept  in  uniformity  of  action  by  the  ascen- 
dant principle  ;  tii;it  principle  by  which  you 
"  serve  the  creature  more  than  the  Creator." 

While  you  are  beheld  in  this  firm  conjunc- 
tion with  the  worUI,  by  a  general  attachment, 
and  by  a  distributive  application  of  that  attach- 
ment, like  the  Indian  fig-tree  connecting  itself 
vitally,  at  a  hundred  spots,  with  the  soil  over 
which  it  spreads,  it  is  no  wonder  that  a  person 
desirous  of  warning  you  not  to  make  light  of 
infinitely  higher  interests,  should  attempt  it 
with  very  faint  hope,  or  be  discouraged  from 
making  the  attempt  at  all.  That  which  he  has 
to  present  to  you  will  be  repelled  by  a  principle 
which  acts  in  a  combination  of  resisting  im- 
pulses, working  with  uniformity  and  constancy  ; 
some  of  them  proceeding,  perhaps,  from  the 
temper  of  mind  acquired  in  commercial  pur- 
suits ;  some  of  them  from  the  habits  of  feeling 
which  have  grown  from  **  friendship  with  the 
world,"  from  contented  and  preferred  associa- 
tion with  men  devoid  of  religion  ;  some  of  them 
from  the  disposition  produced  by  the  study  and 
strife  to  make  your  way  upward  in  society  ; 
some  of  them  from  the  practice  of  relieving 
the  cares  of  business  only  by  the  indulgences 
of  pleasure  ;  and  some  of  them,  perhaps,  from 
a  taste  for  appearing  as  men  of  fashion.     All 


136  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

this  is  a  systematic  fortification  against  the 
access  of  religion,  to  instruct,  persuade,  or  re- 
monstrate. And  the  fatal  completion  of  the 
evil  may  be,  that  you  are  insensible  of  any 
great  evil  or  danger  in  all  this.  For  you  have 
fully  adopted  the  world's  standard  of  character, 
according  to  which  you  may  be,  all  this  while, 
what  are  called  honorable  men.  You  may  even 
come  to  take  credit  for  considerable  liberality 
of  opinion  in  allowing,  that  it  is  right  enough 
there  should  be  in  the  world  a  class  of  earnest 
devoted  religionists,  as  well  as  other  varieties 
of  character ;  that  they  do  very  right  to  follow 
up  their  own  convictions ;  their  only  offence 
being  the  fanaticism  of  insisting,  that  all  ought 
to  be  such — that  you  ought  to  be  such  ;  where- 
as yours,  you  say,  is  a  character  much  better 
adapted  to  the  world  we  are  to  live  in  than 
theirs. 

So  you  are,  on  the  whole,  in  high  favor  with 
yourselves.  You  may  not,  indeed,  be  entirely 
secure  against  occasional  disturbances  to  your 
self-satisfaction  ;  there  may  be  moments  when 
a  suspicion  arises  from  the  dark  depth  within 
that  all  is  not  right ;  when  conscience,  gener- 
ally still,  gives  some  intimations,  like  the  sighs 
of  a  person  beginning  to  recover  from  suspend- 
ed animation  ;  when  some  glimpses  of  a  greater 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  137 

economy  are  admitted  througJi  narrow  rents 
and  openings  in  the  little  system  within  which 
you  are  immured.  But  you  suffer  no  iiabitual 
annoyance  of  an  impression  that  you  must  alter 
your  plan.  This  your  general  satisfaction  with 
the  part  you  are  acting,  depresses  the  spirit  of 
the  pleader  for  religion.  He  wants  to  persuade 
you  to  reflect ;  but  how  and  when  can  he  bring 
an  adequate  force  of  such  persuasion  to  act  on 
such  a  state  of  the  mind  ?  You  are  so  possessed , 
he  says,  with  your  own  good  opinion,  that  any 
serious  examination,  whether  it  be  not  a  de- 
lusive one,  will  appear  to  you  a  superfluous 
trouble,  and  the  exhortation  to  it,  oflicious  and 
impertinent. 

But  will  you  absolutely  refuse  such  an  exer- 
cise of  your  reason  ?  How  can  you  have  lived 
so  long  without  feeling  that  so  much,  at  least, 
is  what  a  rational,  accountable  being  ought  to 
do?  Do  it  now  !  What  should  prevent  you? 
You  have  in  that  spirit  the  power  to  think  at 
this  very  lime.  You  can  fix  it  intently  on  the 
subject  that  you  shall  choose.  Now  is  an  in- 
terval which  can  be  exempted  from  tlie  indi.s- 
pensable  demands  of  business,  and,  if  you  will 
it  so,  from  the  allurements  to  dissipation.  You 
may,  you  can,  this  hour,  recollect  whether  there 
be  a  subject  of  transcendent  importance,  which 
13 


1  38  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

you  have  never  duly  considered  yet ;  and  you 
may  choose  it,  instead  of  another  subject,  for 
present  consideration.     You  cannot  help  seeing 
what  that  subject  is.     It  is  Religion  that  stands 
before  you,  with  oracles,  lights,  and   an  exhi- 
bition of  the  most  grand  and  awful  images.     It 
is  that  which  represents  io   you,  the   real  truth 
of  the  state  of  your  soul   toward  God,  the  con- 
cern  of  your  eternal  interests,  the  relation  you 
stand   in    to   another    world,  the  peremptory  re- 
quirement of  what  you    must  do  to  be  saved. 
What  can   ever,  through  endless  duration,  be 
worth  your  considering,   if  this  be  not  ?    You 
know  that  religion,  unless  it  be  a  fable,  has  all 
this  importance,  that  it   has  this  importance  to 
yov,  and  that  it  has   it  to  you   now,   while  this 
day,  this  hour,   is  passing.     In  a  matter  of  in- 
comparably less  magnitude,  (say  it  were  a  most 
critical    hazard,   threatening   you   at  the  point 
where  your  temporal  prosperity   mainly  depend- 
ed,  and  might   be   ruined    for   life,)  you  would 
feel  that  the  concern  pressed  importunately  and 
justly  on  the  thoughts  and  cares  of  the  present 
instant.     If  any   one   advised   you   to   take  no 
trouble  of  vigilance  or  exertion  about  it,  to  oc- 
cupy yourself  entirely   with  other  matters,  and 
indifferently   await  the  event,  you  would  spurn 
the  suggestion  as  equally  unfeeling  and  absurd. 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  139 

What !  you  would  say,  when  the  wliole  ques- 
tion of  safety  or  utter  ruin  may  be  depending 
on  tlie  judgment  and  activity  which  1  may  ex- 
ercise this  day  ?  But  here  is  the  supreme  in- 
terest of  your  existence.  It  cannot  be  safe, 
you  will  confess  it  cannot,  if  you  will  give  it  no 
serious  attention.  But  then  you  are  confessing 
that  you  have  left  it  till  now  in  peril,  and  that 
it  is  so  at  this  very  hour — nay,  in  greater  peril 
than  ever  before,  as  aggravated  by  the  guilt  of 
such  wilful  neglect,  and  by  the  diminution  of 
the  term  allotted  for  the  attainment  of  a  happy 
security.  And  can  you  repel  from  you,  can 
you  resolutely  set  yourself  to  force  off,  its  ur- 
gent application  for  your  immediate  attention  ? 
Look  at  the  action  of  your  mind.  Is  it  really, 
even  now,  in  the  very  effort  of  an  impulse  to 
drive  this  subject  away,  and  are  you  giving 
your  whole  will  to  make  this  impulse  success- 
ful ?  And  do  you  feel  that  you  are  prevailing? 
And  is  it  impossible  for  you  to  reflect,  at  this 
moment,  ichat  it  is  that  you  are  successfully 
doing  ?  Cannot  you  perceive,  have  you  no  sus- 
picion, what  dreadful  principle  it  is  that  is  giv- 
ing you  this  power  and  this  success?  Can  you 
let  it  perform  such  a  work,  and  not  resolve  to 
inspect  its  nature  1  Look  at  it,  observe  its  fa- 
tal operation  just  now  going  on  ;  and  then  say, 


140  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

honestly,  whether  any  thing  can  be  of  a  quality 
more  execrable  ?  Do  not  say  this  is  extrava- 
gant language ;  do  not  stay  to  mind  the  lan- 
guage at  all ;  but  fix  your  attention  on  the 
thing  itself.  Words  are  wind  ;  but  there  is  a 
reality  there  in  operation  at  this  moment  in 
your  mind.  It  is  actually  there — the  fearful 
principle,  which  is  actuating  your  feelings  and 
your  will  to  force  away  from  your  spirit  the 
thoughts,  and  all  the  benefit  of  thinking,  of 
your  highest  duty  and  interest,  of  your  eternal 
salvation.  If  it  could  be  suddenly  revealed  to 
you  in  full  light,  what  an  operation  this  is 
which  you  are  even  now  suffering  there  in  your 
heart,  no  awful  catastrophe  in  nature,  no  tem- 
pest nor  shock  of  an  earthquake,  would  affright 
you  so  much. 

After  an  interval,  we  would  ask  you,  and  is 
it  now  done  ?  Has  the  repelling  principle,  after 
so  many  former  successes,  prevailed  once  now; 
so  that  the  great  subject  which  approached  you, 
appealed  to  you,  solicited  you,  displayed  smiles 
of  divine  benignity,  alternating  with  just  men- 
aces and  frowns  on  your  obstinacy,  has  been 
driven  off,  and  is  vanishing  like  the  images  of  a 
disturbing  dream  when  one  awakes  !  Are  you 
now  quite  at  your  ease  again,  to  go  free  into 
your   business,    conviviality,    or   amusements? 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  141 

Then,  what  have  you  accomplished, — but  to 
send  an  angel  of  mercy  away,  and  to  vanquish 
any  last  power  thai  remained  in  an  almost  ex- 
piring conscience  ?  What  have  you  gained, 
but  to  have  your  soul  still  more  securely  grasped 
by  that  which  withholds  it  from  God,  and  a 
confirmed  power  and  facility  of  rejecting  that 
which  speaks  in  his  name,  if  it  should  obtrude 
on  you  again  ?  In  what  new  principle  do  you 
walk  forth,  but  that  of  having  less  remaining 
time,  and  augmented  disinclination,  for  that 
one  thing  of  which  the  failure  is  perdition? 

Such  a  view  of  the  disposition  of  your 
minds,  and  of  the  manner  in  which  you  sub- 
mit and  betray  them  to  be  acted  upon,  chills 
the  animation  of  a  person  who  would  plead 
with  you  to  apply  them  to  religion.  But  still 
we  would  hope  belter  things,  and  that  it  may 
yet  not  be  in  vain  to  conjure  you  to  reflect  on 
this  great  subject  as  involving  your  welfare. 
Tell  us  whether  it  be  utterly  an  idle  hope, 
which  a  more  perfect  knowledge  of  you  would 
show  it  foolish  to  entertain,  that  you  may  be  in- 
duced to  employ,  in  the  exercise  of  such  reflec- 
tion, this  day  and  hour  to  better  purpose  than 
any  former  one  of  your  life.  Why  should  not 
this  be  the  day  for  a  determined  seriousness  of 
thought?  Think  enough,  at  least,  to  give  a 
13* 


142  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

reason  why  it  should  not ;  and  think  whether 
it  would  not  be  worse  than  a  shame  to  refuse 
such  an  employment  without  a  reason.     And  if 
the  only  reason  be,  that  you  are  reluctant,  con- 
sider whether  that  reason,  that  reluctance,  will 
ever  spontaneously   cease.     But  consider,  too, 
whether  that  reluctance  be  not  itself,  in  truth, 
a  mighty  reason  on  the  opposite  side,  as  imply- 
ing, in  the  conscious  discordancy  between  your 
spirit  and  the  subject,  a  disorder  so  formidable, 
that  madness  alone  would  be  content  to  leave  it 
unexamined     and     unreformed.      Would   that 
a  super-human  power  might  stand  in  your  way 
just  here,  stop  you  at  this  point  in  your  course, 
and  constrain  you  to  reflect  now!    The  hours, 
the  day,  which  you  are  just  now   entering  on, 
are  as  yet  vacant,   but  will  soon    be  filled,  and 
gone.     They   are  coming   as  a  space  of  time 
which  might   be,   may  be,  filled  with  a   mental 
exercise  of  immense  value.     Here  is  a  subject 
claiming  to  occupy  them  as  they  come  on.    If  ad- 
mitted to  do  so,  it  will  indeed  inflict  remorse  for 
your  having  sent  away  into  the  past,  a  long  suc- 
cession of  the  portions  of  your  time  charged  with 
no  such  precious  contents  ;  thus  avenging  itself 
on  you  for  your  prolonged  rejection.     But  will 
that  be  an  indication  that  you  would  have  done 
well  to  reject  it  still,  and  excite  your  grief  that 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  143 

it  has  for  once  effectually  arrested  you  ?  Would 
you,  under  tliis  arrest,  struggle  as  to  escape 
from  an  enemy  ;  when  the  subject  will  bring 
with  it  the  evidence  and  the  conviction  that, 
though  with  an  austere  and  accusatory  aspect, 
it  is  certainly  come  as  a  friend  ?  Admit  it  into 
your  mind  and  time  this  once,  with  all  its  so- 
lemnities, and  even  its  reproaches.  And  if,  as 
a  condition  of  doing  so,  you  will  insist  on  re- 
taining some  precautionary  resource  against 
being  absolutely  and  irrecoverably  surrendered 
to  it,  you  may  be  assured,  (if  you  can  accept  so 
melancholy  a  fact  for  consolation,)  that  in  the 
strength  of  your  corrupt  nature  you  will  not 
easily  lose  all  power  of  re-action  for  debarring 
its  entrance,  when,  at  another  time,  it  shall 
present  itself  to  you  again. 

There  possibly  are  special  circumstances  of 
the  present  time  of  a  nature  to  enforce  this  ex- 
hortation. It  may  be,  that  one  of  you,  wor- 
shippers of  the  world,  has  just  experienced  an 
ill  reward  of  his  faithful  devotion.  Some  griev- 
ous  disappointment,  perhaps,  some  failure  of  a 
project,  some  fall  of  your  fortunes,  some  blast  on 
your  hopes,  has  reduced  you  to  a  temporary  dis- 
gust with  what  you  have  so  unreservedly  loved. 
Just  now  the  world  stands  before  you  with 
faded  attractions,  and   you  feel  as  if  you  could 


144  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

forswear  your  dedication  and  attachment  to  it. 
Now,  though  this  be  a  turn  of  feeling  not  the 
purest  in  |)rinciple,  it  might  be  made  beneficial 
in  effect.  Instead  of  allowing  your  spirit  to  re- 
main stagnant  in  a  sullen  and  resentful  mortifi- 
cation, waiting  till  the  world,  which,  however 
cruelly  it  may  sport  with  its  votaries,  does  not 
easily  let  any  of  them  go,  shall  again  assume  an 
aspect  of  blandishment,  and  renew  its  promises, 
how  wise  would  it  be  to  take  advantage  of  this 
reflux  of  your  affections  to  turn  your  thoughts 
toward  religion,  and  see,  and  try,  whether  there 
may  not  be  something  better  for  you  there.  It 
would  be  a  worthy  revenge  on  a  world  that  has 
disappointed,  cheated,  and  wronged  you,  to 
avail  yourself  of  the  recoil  of  your  heart  from  it, 
in  reinforcement  of  the  conviction  that  it  is  time 
to  "  seek  a  better  country ;"  thus  turning  it 
into  an  impulse  to  a  new-formed  aim  at  **  the 
prize  of  the  high-calling."  But  at  any  rate, 
and  at  the  least,  do  not  let  this  disturbance  of 
your  friendship  with  the  world  be  lost,  as  a  cir- 
cumstance to  coincide  with  the  remonstrance 
which  would  awaken  you  to  serious  reflection. 
Do  not,  at  once,  fall  out  with  the  world,  and 
disregard  or  resent  that  which  would  tell  you 
how  just  is  your  quarrel,  how  long  since  it 
ought  to  have  taken  place,  and  how  incompar" 


LIVIJSG  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  145 

ably    belter   you    may   do    llian    make    up  the 
breach. 

Perhaps  some  of  you  have  just  witnessed, 
with  indignant  vexation,  one  of  tlie  iniquitous 
partialities  of  fortune,  as  you  call  it.  A  man 
whom  you  know  to  be  of  worthless  or  detesta- 
ble character,  has  obtained,  through  apparent 
casualty,  or  by  means  of  craft  or  corrupt  inter- 
est, or  even  by  the  most  undisguised  violation 
of  right,  some  remarkable  advantage  of  enrich- 
ment or  precedence  ;  such  a  thing  as  you  had 
coveted  but  not  presumed  to  hope  for  ;  or,  pos- 
sibly, as  you  had  hoped  and  indefatigably  la- 
bored for,  many  years,  but  never  could  grasp 
the  prize.  And  in  the  pride  of  this  acquisition 
he  insulted  the  more  deserving  men,  at  the  cost 
of  whose  disappointment  and  injury  he  had 
made  it.  You  exclaimed,  What  a  world  this 
is,  where  the  good  things  go  to  the  worst  men  ; 
and  merit  may  pine  and  die!  But  is  this  the 
identical  world  to  which  you,  nevertheless,  are 
60  infatuated  that  you  will  not  so  much  as  think 
of  another  ?  What,  are  you  resolved  that  a 
glaring  manifestation  to  you  of  the  quality  of 
the  object  you  have  idolized,  shall  rather  serve 
to  any  effect,  even  that  of  corroding  your  heart 
to  no  avail,  than  to  that  of  lending  force  to  the 
persuasions  of  religion  ;  of  religion,  which  has 


146  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

uniformly  testified  to  you  that  your  object  is — 
what  you  are  now  practically  finding  it  ?  Would 
you  rather  be  retained,  resentful  but  still  ser- 
vile, for  this  tyrant  to  exhibit  you  in  scorn  as  a 
slave,  fretting  indeed,  but  impotent,  even  in 
will,  to  revolt,  than  adopt  the  hero's  language, 
exalted  into,  a  Christian  sense  and  spirit, 
"  Then,  thus  I  turn  my  back ;  there  is  a  world 
elsewhere  ?" 

It  n)ay  be,  again,  that  one  of  you  has  lately 
seen  a  rival  and  coeval  worshipper  of  the  world 
leave  it.  Perhaps  the  manner  of  his  departing 
answered  to  the  description,  "  driven  away." 
You  observed  the  long,  lingering  look  cast  after 
all  that  was  receding,  and  the  fearful  glance 
toward  what  was  approaching.  You  saw  what 
was  the  result  of  that  choice  which  had  been 
made  by  you  both,  and  to  which  he  had  re- 
mained constant  nearly  to  the  moment  when 
an  irresistible  power  interposed  to  rend  him  off. 
You  have  the  images  of  this  sad  spectacle  fresh 
now  in  your  mind  ;  and  those  images — are  they 
atheists  there  ? 

Or  you  may  have  beheld  a  less  tragical  ex- 
emplification of  what  the  world  will  do  for  its 
friends,  in  the  case  of  one  whom  you  had  long 
known  as  a  believer  in  its  promises,  a  zealot  to 
its  principles,  and  a  staunch  pursuer  of  its  ob- 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  147 

jects  ;  but  who,  in  the  closing  scene,  relented 
into  shame  and  penitential  sorrow,  faintly  min- 
gled with  hope  in  the  divine  mercy  which  he 
implored.  He  declared  to  you  his  overwhelm- 
ing conviction  of  the  folly  of  his  course,  and 
yours ;  and  entreated  you  no  longer  to  leave 
your  whole  soul  immersed  in  that  which  must, 
in  such  an  hour,  break  away  from  around  you, 
and  abandon  you  to  a  desolation  like  his. 
Now  recollect  ;  at  the  time  of  receiving  such 
an  admonition,  did  you  really  think  there  was 
nothinor  rational  in  it?  While,  for  decorum's 
sake  at  least,  you  put  on  a  grave  and  assent- 
ing manner,  did  you,  nevertheless,  coojly  say 
within  yourself,  or  was  there  a  consciousness 
equivalent  to  saying,  I  need  not  take  any  fur- 
ther thouofht  of  this  ?  I  do  not  wonder  that  this 
person,  in  such  circumstances,  should  talk  so  ; 
but  what  he  says  or  feels  has  no  appropriateness 
in  its  application  to  me.  I  must  not  let  any 
such  gloomy  ideas  take  possession  of  my  mind  ; 
no;  not  even  though  it  be  possible  enough,  I 
m^y.  ultimately  come  into  a  situation  in  which 
I  shall  think  and  feel  in  the  same  manner. 

We  may  confidently  assume,  that  you  did 
not,  on  the  spot,  maintain  such  composure,  and 
pledge  yourself  to  these  conclusions.  A  cer- 
tain   indistinct    dismay,    at   the   least,    invaded 


148  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY 

you,  to  the  effect  of  subduing  you,  with  some 
general  kind  of  conviction,  to  the  formation  of 
some  general  kind  of  purpose.  Or  possibly  the 
impression  was  exceedingly  powerful,  the  con- 
viction a  distinct  act  of  judgment,  and  the  reso- 
lution very  determinate.  And  what  then  ? 
Have  you  since  deliberately  judged  all  this  to 
have  been  a  vain  agitation  of  your  spirit,  a 
brief  delirium,  occasioned  by  a  sympathetic  in- 
fection from  the  sight  of  sickness,  distress,  and 
death?  If  not,  have  the  intervention  of  a  cer- 
tain number  of  hours  and  days,  a  short  succes- 
sion of  risings  and  settings  of  the  sun,  and  the 
return  of  the  accustomed  thoughts  and  employ- 
ments, essentially  altered  the  merits  of  the  case  ? 
Have  these  caused  what  was  truth,  and  obliga- 
tion, and  danger,  to  be  such  no  loncrer  ?  Has 
the  mere  passing  of  time  reduced  importance  to 
inanity  ?  Or  has  it  detached  from  you,  and 
brought  to  appear  as  no  longer  your  own,  that 
grand  interest  which  can  have  no  reality  but  as 
a  personal  one,  but  as  your  own  ? — ^just  as  if 
you  were  to  consider  the  things  affecting  your 
natural  life  (for  instance,  your  state  of  health 
or  disease,  your  exposure  to  a  peril  or  security 
against  it,)  as  something  existing  in  the  ab- 
stract ;  a  reality  indeed,  but  something  quite 
separable   from*  yourself.     The   circumstance, 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  149 

too,  that  by  the  passing  of  the  intervening  time, 
you  are  carried  a  little  nearer  to  the  final  result 
of  your  plan  of  life, — has  this  actually  lessened 
the  importance  which  you  saw  in  such  magni- 
tude by  that  solemn  light,  which  flashed  upon 
you  in  the  gloomy  chamber  where  a  rival  lover 
of  the  world  was  penitentially  preparing  to  leave 
it?  Think  of  a  rational  being  so  easily  passing 
free  from  the  hold  of  the  Ktron;Test  forms  of  ad- 
monition ;  and  spending  his  time  to  the  very 
purpose,  in  effect,  of  reducing  his  apprehension 
of  the  awful  magnificence  of  eternity,  progres- 
sively to  a  more  and  more  diminutive  impres- 
sion aiiainst  the  moment  when  he  is  to  plunn-e 
into  it ! 

Should  no  circumstances  nearly  resembling 
these  have  occurred  within  your  recent  expe- 
rience, it  would  be  a  rather  unusual  lot  if  you 
have  not  met  with  some  incident,  some  turn 
of  events,  some  aspect  of  life  or  death,  adapt- 
ed to  enforce  serious  reflection.  Look  a  little 
way  back  in  memory,  and  see  if  no  image  will 
arise  to  remind  you  that  then,  and  there,  by 
such  an  event,  such  a  spectacle,  such  a  voice, 
you  were  specially  admonished  to  consider  your 
course.  And  answer  it  to  yourself  what  effect 
that  appeal  to  your  conscience  ought  to  have 
had.  But  do  not  narrowly  limit  such  a  review, 
14 


150  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

as  if  afraid  to  return  to  those  spots  in  past  time, 
where   the  hand   of  a  dreaded  power   touched 
you  as  you  passed,  where  truth  spoke  to  you  in 
severe   accents,  or   a   more  gentle,   persuasive 
voice  entreated  you  not  to  go  thoughtlessly  on. 
If  you  he  afraid  to  go  back  thither,  what  is  it  that 
this   apprehension  tells  you  ?    Do  not  limit  the 
retrospect  as   if  you   had    no  cencern  with  the 
occasions  and   causes  that   once,    long    since, 
challenged  your  consideration  to   the   most  im- 
portant subject.     Do   not  yield  to  the   deluded  ^ 
feeling,  that  all  those,  being  gone   so  far  away, 
have   perished   from  all   connexion   with   you  ; 
like  the  portion  of  air  which  you  then  breathed, 
or  the  grass  or  flowers  on  which  you  happened 
to  tread.     For  be   assured  they  inseparably  be- 
long to  your  present  and  ultimate  responsibility. 
They  are  all  coming  after  you,  however  silent- 
ly and  unthought-of,  and  will  be  with  you  in 
the  great  account.     And   if  you  could   be   in- 
duced   to    make  an   effbrt,    in   any    thoughtful 
hour,  to  imagine  with  what  a  vividness  of  re- 
cognition, and  intensity  of  reproach,  the  moni- 
tory occurrences  of  your  past  life  will  at  last 
present  themselves  to  strike    upon    your   con- 
science, if  they  shall  have  been  disregarded  in 
their  time,  and  suffered   to  go   useless  into  ob- 
livion as  you  have  proceeded  on,  it  might  have 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  151 

the  effect  of  recallinof  them  now,  to  combine  in 
operation  with  all  tlie  other  things  which  sum- 
mon you  to  reflection. 

Wiien  a  religious  ol3server  sometimes  has 
his  thoughts  directed  upon  you,  he  is  struck 
with  the  idea,  what  a  mighty  assemblage  of 
considerations,  that  should  irresistibly  compel 
you  to  thoughtfulness,  you  are  insensible  of. 
As,  when  we  extend  our  contemplations  conjec- 
turally  into  the  economy  of  existence  which 
surrounds  us,  it  is  suggested  to  thought  what 
unembodied  intelligences,  what  communica- 
tions, what  agencies,  what  elements  perhaps, 
what  processes,  there  are  on  all  sides,  and 
many  of  them  relating  to  us,  but  of  which  the 
senses  admit  no  perception  ;  so  in  the  spiritual 
economy,  that  is,  the  system  of  relations  in 
which  the  immortal  mind  stands  involved, 
there  are  realities,  there  are  truths,  of  highest 
import,  there  are  arguments,  warning  circum- 
stances, alternatives  of  good  and  evil,  most 
vitally  relating  to  your  welfare,  but  non-existent 
to  your  apprehension.  The  very  emanations 
of  heaven,  radiating  downward  to  where  you 
dwell,  are  intercepted,  and  do  not  touch  you. 
It  is  the  frequent  reflection  of  a  thoughtful 
mind,  in  observing  you — what  ideas,  what 
truths,  what  mighty  appeals,  belong  to  the  con- 


152  LIVING  FOE  IMMORTALITY. 

dition  of  this  one  man  ;  and  of  that,  devoted 
and  enslaved  to  the  world — O,  why  is  it  impos- 
sible to  bring  them  into  application  !  A  few 
words  are  sufficient  to  express  such  things,  as  if 
they  were  to  fall  with  their  proper  weight,  and 
no  more,  on  their  spirits,  enclosed,  as  it  were, 
in  the  consolidated  habits  of  the  world,  mixed 
and  hardened  in  its  clay,  would  excite  a  com- 
motion through  their  whole  insensate  being, 
and  alarm  them  to  a  sense  of  a  new  world 
of  thoughts  and  interests.  A  few  minutes  of 
time  would  be  enough  for  the  enunciation  of 
what,  if  it  could  be  received  by  them  in  its 
simple,  unexaggerated  importance,  would  stop 
that  one  man's  gay  career,  as  if  a  great  serpent 
had  raised  its  head  in  his  path  ;  would  confound 
that  other's  calculation  for  emolument ;  would 
bring  a  sudden  dark  eclipse  on  that  third  man's 
visions  of  fame  ;  would  tear  them  all  from  their 
inveterate  and  almost  desperate  combination 
with  what  is  to  perish,  and,  amidst  their  sur- 
prise and  terror,  would  excite  an  emotion  of 
joy  that  they  had  been  dissevered,  before  it  was 
too  late,  from  an  object  that  was  carrying  them 
down  a  rapid  declination  toward  destruction. — 
And  the  chief  of  these  things,  so  potent  if  ap- 
plied, are  not  withheld  as  if  secreted  and  silent 
in  some  dark  cloud,  from   which  we  had  to  in- 


LlVIxNG  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  153 

voke  them  to  break  forth  in  lightning ;  they 
are  actually  exhibited  in  the  divine  revelation. 
This  so  strange  a  condition, — that  there  are 
mighty  truths,  requisitions,  overtures,  promises, 
portents,  and  menaces,  as  it  were  close  to  you, 
suspended  just  over  you,  of  a  nature  to  demol- 
ish the  present  state  of  your  mind  if  brought  in 
contact  with  it,  and  that,  nevertheless,  it  re- 
mains undisturbed, — is  sometimes  a  matter  of 
gloomy,  indignant,  and  almost  misanthropic 
speculation.  But  in  the  season  of  better  feel- 
inor,  the  reliorious  beholder  is  excited  to  a  be- 
nevolent  impatience,  a  restless  wish  that  things 
so  near  and  important  to  you  should  take  hold 
upon  you.  Why  cannot,  he  says,  that  which 
comes  between  and  renders  those  things,  in- 
trinsically of  such  awful  force,  actually  power- 
less, be  destroyed  or  removed?  Iftherebea 
principle  of  repulsion,  if  there  be  a  veil,  if  there 
be  a  shield  invisibly  held  by  a  demon's  hand, 
let  it  be  annihilated,  that  the  appropriate  truth 
may  rush  in  with  all  its  power.  Let  the 
thought  of  the  Almighty  fulminate  on  the  mind 
of  that  mortal  who  is  living  "  without  God  in 
the  world."  Let  the  idea  of  eternity  over- 
whelm that  spirit,  whose  whole  scheme  of  ex- 
istence embraces  but  a  diminutive  portion  of 
time.  Let  the  worth  and  danger  of  the  soul  be 
14* 


154  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

instantly  revealed  to  that  person,  whose  chief 
cares  are  engrossed  with  the  accommodation  or 
adornment  of  the  body.  Let  the  value  of  treas- 
ures in  another  world  be  brought  into  sudden 
contrast  with  earthly  wealth,  in  the  view  of  that 
worshipper  of  Mammon.  Let  the  scene  of  the 
last  judgment  present  itself,  in  a  glare,  to  him 
whose  conscience  is  in  repose  on  the  delusive 
principles  of  the  world's  morality  and  religion. 
Let  an  austere  apparition,  as  from  the  dead, 
accost  him  who  is  living  as  if  life  were  never  to 
have  an  end.  To  him  who  is  indifferent  to  the 
whole  concern  of  salvation,  let  there  be  an 
affecting  display  of  what  an  extraordinary  ap- 
pointment, of  mingled  justice  and  mercy,  was 
required  to  render  it  possible,  and  of  what  it 
cost  the  Saviour  of  the  world.  Let  these  things 
strike  into  the  souls  of  men  of  the  world,  and 
they  would  awake  in  amazement  at  their  pre- 
vious condition,  and  continue  long  in  sorrow 
for  its  criminality  and  absurdity.  And  are 
these  still  to  be  exactly  the  things  for  which 
they  have  no  sensibility  or  perception  ?  And 
is  it  in  the  immediate  presence  of  these  objects, 
constantly  pressing  for  their  attention,  but  un- 
acknowledged and  unseen,  that  they  are  to  oc- 
cupy themselves  with  every  business,  or  enter- 
tain every  trifle  and   vanity,  satisfied  that  noth- 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY  .  J  55 

ing  ivS  greatly  wrong,  assured  that  all  is  safe,  or 
not  even  caring  so  much  as  to  think  whether 
they  be  safe  or  not  ? 

But,  men  of  the  world,  it  is  possible  you 
may  be  provoked  to  assume  the  defensive,  and 
deny  the  justice  of  so  strong  a  charge  of  irra- 
tionality and  guilt  as  we  make,  in  applying  to 
you  this  denomination  with  these  comments. 
But  it  is  not  safe  for  you  to  do  tiiis  with  a 
thoughtless  confidence,  without  an  exercise  of 
reflection  to  ascertain  the  real  state  of  your 
mind  and  character.  Be  persuaded  to  make  an 
effort  to  take  a  true  account  of  that  state,  as  a 
simple  matter  of  fact.  Of  what,  in  all  the 
world,  should  you  be  concerned  to  know  the 
truth,  if  not  of  that  internal  condition  which  is 
forming  your  destiny  for  hereafter? 

Now,  then,  is  it  not  true,  is  it  not  a  fact, 
that  almost  the  whole  system  of  the  feelings 
and  activity  of  your  mind  is  limited  exclu- 
sively to  this  world,  so  as  to  be  practically 
much  the  same  as  if  you  were  unaware  that 
your  being  has  an  ampler  sphere  of  interests? 
Observe  what  is  the  extent  of  the  range  which 
your  spirit  takes.  Question  it  how  far  it  goes 
forth,  habitually,  or  at  any  time.  See,  and  ac- 
knowledge to  yourself,  what  it  is  that  is  in  sole 


156  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

possession  of  you,  as  if  you  were  made  for 
nothing  more. 

Take  a  view  of  your  thoughts.  Tiiey  are  in 
number  incalculable,  and  they  can  go  in  all 
directions,  to  a  boundless  extent ;  they  might 
*'  wander  through  eternity."  Whither  do  they 
go,  the  countless  thousands  of  them,  and  on 
what  do  they  fix  ?  You  may  perceive  that  near- 
ly all  of  them  stop  within  the  circle  of  this 
world's  concerns.  They  start,  and  move,  and 
Iravjirse,  incessantly,  but  still  within  this  con- 
tracted scope  ;  seeming  to  know  of  nothing 
that  is  revealed,  or  important,  or  possible  to 
you  beyond  it.  How  many  of  them  ever  go,  in 
the  impulse  of  faith,  into  the  spiritual  region,  or 
bring  you  intimations  of  having  seen  into  a  su- 
perior world  ?  But  there  is  no  need  of  thus  ad- 
ding question  to  question  ;  you  plainly  know, 
that  the  continual  activity  of  your  thoughts  is 
centered  upon  an  order  of  temporal  interests; 
that  there,  and  there  almost  exclusively,  they 
are  busy  and  never  tired,  morning  and  evening, 
and  throughout  all  your  times  and  seasons. 

Observe,  also,  your  affections  and  passions, 
those  feelings  of  the  heart  which  often  accom- 
pany the  acts  of  thought.  See  what  it  is  that 
most  certainly  awakes  them  at  the  slightest 
call ;  that  attracts,  attaches,  and  absorbs  them. 


LlVlNfi  FOR  IMMOUTALITV.  157 

Suppose  that,  at  very  many  times,  fallen  upon 
inditrerenlly  and  without  any  selection  of  occa- 
sions, the  question  were  to  be  suddenly  put, 
and  ingenuously  answered  from  consciousness 
at  the  instant,  What  is,  just  now,  the  most  an 
object  of  comi)lacency,  desire,  or  solicitude  ? 
how  often  do  you  think  it  would  happen,  in 
a  thousand  repetitions  of  the  question,  that  the 
answer  would  name  any  object  of  higher  order 
than  this  world's  affairs  ?  Would  it  be  twenty 
times  ;  would  it  be  ten  ? 

And  your  schemes  of  active  pursuit, — what 
is  that  which  would  be  their  success  ?  Is  there 
one  of  them,  or  any  part  of  one  of  them,  of 
which  no  possible  turn  of  worldly  events  would 
be  the  disappointment?  Would  any  thing,  that 
should  be  the  most  disastrous  to  your  spiritual 
welfare,  be  a  frustration  of  any  one  of  those 
schemes  ? 

We  say,  is  it  not  true,  that  this  is  your- 
state  of  mind  ?  But,  then,  reflect,  that  you 
practically  disown  the  grand  relations  of  your 
nature.  You  endeavor  not  to  belong,  if  we 
may  express  it  so,  to  a  spiritual  world,  but  to 
the  merely  material  and  animal  order  of  exis- 
tence. In  plainer  terms,  you  acknowledge  no 
good  in  being  spirits,  but  to  serve  the  earthly 
purposes  of  this  short  life.     You  do  what  you 


158  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

can  to  withdraw,  by  a  resolute  subsidence  and 
degradation,  from  that  economy  which  holds 
the  spirit's  sojourning  on  earth  connected  with 
every  thing  higher  in  existence.  From  the  sys- 
tem constituted,  (as  a  part  of  that  economy,) 
for  renovating,  training,  and  finally  exalting 
them,  you  practically  make  yourselves  aliens 
and  outcasts,  rejecting  its  benefits,  and  wishing 
you  could  be  forgotten  in  its  jurisdiction.  You 
are  content  that  any  other  fallen  beings,  rather 
than  you,  should  be  included  in  the  dispensa- 
tion of  mercy,  through  a  Mediator.  And,  to 
complete  this  abdication  of  your  most  solemn 
relations,  you  assume  to  be  only  in  some  very 
relaxed  and  undefined  manner  subjects  of  re- 
sponsibility and  retribution.  All  this,  in  effect, 
you  are  doing,  in  devoting  yourselves,  with  soul 
and  life,  exclusively  to  the  interests  of  this 
world.  For  what  less  can  you  be  doing,  while 
you  refuse  all  practical  acknowledgment  of 
these  grand  relations,  maintain  a  state  of  mind 
unconformed  to  them,  employ  no  cares  or  affec- 
tions upon  them,  and  will  not  allow  even  your 
thoughts  to  be  directed  to  them  1  But  is  it  not 
an  enormous  and  fearful  absurdity,  that  while 
thus  you  are  actually  involved  in  relations 
which  no  power  but  that  which  could  annihi- 
late your  being  can  dissolve,  with   a  grand  sys- 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  159 

tern,  comprehending  wliatever  belongs  to  the 
existence  and  interests  of  spirits,  comprehend- 
ing a  method  of  redemption  tiirough  a  Media- 
tor, an  invisible  state,  heaven,  hell,  and  eter- 
nity, you  should  form  your  life  on  a  plan,  as  if 
this  relative  condition  of  your  spirit  were  abol- 
ished, or  were  nothing  but  a  fiintastic  theory, 
and  contract  all  the  interests  of  your  spiritual 
and  immortal  being  to  a  span  of  time  and 
earth?  Think  what  the  predicament  will  be, 
when  these  disowned  but  indissoluble  relations 
shall  vindictively  verify  their  reality  and  au- 
thority, and  wrest  you  away  from  that  object 
to  which  you  have  reduced  and  confined  your- 
self, so  as  to  be  almost  growing  into  one  sub- 
stance with  it. 

Again,  is  it  not  true,  that,  in  this  devoted- 
ness  to  the  world  you  are  living  estranged 
from  God  ?  Though  this  was  implied  in  the 
preceding  representation,  you  would  do  well 
to  make  it  a  distinct  matter  to  be  brought  to 
the  proof.  Try  it  by  any  mode  of  questioning 
that  would  the  most  prominently  expose  the 
truth.  For  example  :  suppose  that  such  a 
thing  were  at  any  time  to  take  place,  as  that 
you  should  feel  a  mighty  impression  of  the  di- 
vine presence,  a  consciousness  of  being  per- 
vaded,   in    your   every    faculty,    quality,    and 


160  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

thought,  by  the  sunbeams,  as  it  were,  of  his 
irresistible  intelligence,  an  affecting  sense  of 
your  entire  dependence,  a  horror  for  having 
sinned  against  him,  an  ardent  aspiration  to  en- 
joy his  eternal  favor,  and  a  determination,  with 
the  utmost  impulse  of  your  affections  and  will, 
to  serve  him  thenceforward, — say  whether  this 
would  not  be  the  most  amazing  phenomenon 
that  had  ever  happened  to  you.  Would  you 
not  wonder,  beyond  all  power  of  expression, 
what  new  moral  element  could  have  been  shed 
around  you,  for  your  spirit  to  see  and  breathe 
in  ?  But  then  the  fact  must  be,  that  the  pres- 
sent  state  of  your  mind  is  the  reverse  of  all  this  ; 
that  the  Almighty  God,  your  creator,  preserver, 
and  governor,  the  supreme  benefactor,  and  the 
sole  possible  giver  of  ultimate  felicity,  has  hith- 
erto been  in  your  regard  a  comparatively  insig- 
nificant object.  The  universe  of  his  works,  the 
revelations  of  his  word,  the  directing  interfer- 
ence of  his  dominion,  the  wonders  and  mys- 
teries involved  within  your  own  existence, 
have  but  feebly  and  seldom  brought  the  appre- 
hension of  him  to  your  minds.  The  good 
which  you  have  enjoyed,  and  which  could 
not  have  come  to  you  but  through  an  incon- 
ceivably multifarious  agency  of  an  intelligent 
Power,  you  have  received  as  if  resulting  from 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  161 

some  mechanism  of  nature,  or  imparted  by  the 
pagan  unthinking  soul  of  the  world  ;  but  in- 
deed, without  reflecting  on  it  so  much  as  to  ac- 
knowlediie  even  that  for  its  source.  The 
schemes,  which  have  been  the  chief  business 
and  interest  of  your  life,  were  formed  with  no 
express  consideration  whether  God  would  ap- 
prove them,  and  prosecuted  in  utter  forgetful- 
ness  of  dependence  on  him  for  aid  and  suc- 
cess. If  the  thought  had  spontaneously  arisen, 
What  is  God  to  me,  in  sensible  importance? 
the  reply  might  have  been,  Nothing;  or  less,  at 
most,  than  that  person,  my  friend,  or  that  other, 
my  foe;  than  that  ability  of  my  coadjutors,  that 
application  of  art,  that  machinery,  that  sum  of 
emolument.  As  to  piety  aspiring  so  high  as 
the  experience  of  communion  with  God,  and 
the  influential  operation  of  his  Spirit,  if  such 
ideas,  conveyed  in  such  terms,  incidentally  met 
your  notice,  they  appeared  either  unintelligible 
or  fanatical.  Recollect  and  question  the  habit- 
ual temper  of  your  mind,  whether  it  has  not 
been  an  unwelcome  thing  to  be  reminded  of 
God  at  all.  If  it  might  have  been  conceded  to 
you  that  you  should  obtain  what  would  please 
you  most,  with  respect  to  a  lasting  condition  of 
your  existence,  would  not  the  wish  have  been 
something  like  this  :  that  God,  contenting  him- 
15 


162  LIVING  FOR  [MiMORTALlTY. 

self  with  carrying  on  the  general  system  of  the 
world,  only  rendered  a  little  more  commodious, 
w^ould  allow  you  to  live  in  it  indefinitely  onward 
— and  let  you  alunc  ? 

Now,  if  there  should  be  an  interval  when  you 
are  inclined,  (for  some  of  you  profess  to  be  ca- 
pable of  abstracted  mental  employments,)  to  in- 
dulge your  imagination  in  contemplating  awful 
and  portentous  spectacles,  in  ideal  or  actual  ex- 
istence, you  need  not  range  in  quest  of  such 
into  the  visionary  world.  Nor  need  you  go  to 
far-off  tracts  of  the  creation,  seeking  what 
mighty  forms  of  evil  may  there  have  their 
abode.  The  guardians  of  the  fearful  secrets  of 
any  dark  coast  might  justly  remand  you  back, 
to  behold  here,  in  your  own  place,  a  visitation 
of  the  most  direful  prodigy  which  can  have 
blasted  any  region  with  its  presence.  For  here, 
in  the  condition  of  your  spirits,  the  sovereign 
and  most  sacred  principle  of  order  in  the  crea- 
tion is  abjured  and  exterminated.  To  be  most 
intimately  in  the  presence,  to  be  surrounded 
continually  by  the  glory,  of  a  Being  omnipotent 
and  infinitely  intelligent,  existent  from  eternity 
to  eternity,  the  originator,  supporter,  and  dis- 
poser of  all  other  existence  ;  and  to  feel  no 
powerful  impression  on  your  mind,  no  rever- 
ential fear,  no  frequent  intimations  even  of  the 


LIVING   FOR  IMMORTALITY.  163 

very  fact, — is  not  this  an  astonishing  violation 
of  all  rectitude,  a  most  melancholy  dereliction 
of  all  reason  ?  This  is  to  have  your  best  facul- 
ties shrunk  and  stupified  to  a  strange  conform- 
ity with  brutal  nature,  without  its  innocence 
and  impunity.  This  is  in  eflect  to  tell  that 
Being,  that  his  infinite  supremacy  is  a  vain  cir- 
cumstance in  this  province  of  his  dominion  ; 
that  his  is  an  unnecessary  and  undesirable  pres- 
ence, tolerable  only  while  leaving  you  unre- 
minded  of  it,  or  consenting  to  be  recrarded  with 
indifference.  It  is  as  if,  with  an  inversion  of 
piety,  you  would  thank  him  only  for  being  in- 
visible and  silent,  and  pray  only  that  he  would 
be  more  entirely  and  be  always  so.  You  tell 
him  that  the  most  inconsiderable  of  the  thinors 
he  has  made,  or  even  the  thincrs  which  men 
have  made,  are  of  more  importance  in  your 
view  than  all  the  magnificence  of  his  glory. 
Under  the  heaven  and  effulgence  of  that  glory, 
you  deliberately  involve  your  spirits,  as  it  were, 
within  little  opaque  spheres  of  mailer,  pleased 
to  be  secluded  from  the  light  of  the  universe. 

How  can  we  help  it,  if  you  will  regard  this 
as  a  mere  rhetorical  and  perhaps  pompous  dis- 
play of  an  evil  really  of  no  formidable  mag- 
nitude, and  coolly  pass  it  by  with  the  remark, 
that  we  might  as  well   employ  sober  language  ? 


164  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

We  will  only  say,  beware  that,  in  calling  for 
sober  language,  you  do  not  mean  a  language 
conveying  a  faint  an  unawakening  expression  of 
the  truth.  Beware,  also,  that  you  do  not,  on 
such  a  subject,  mistake  for  soberness,  any 
thing  less  than  deep  and  most  serious  thought. 
And  if  you  will  but  have  the  conscience  to 
exercise  such  thought,  it  may  be  left  to  your 
own  judgment  to  estimate  the  evil  involved  in 
the  undenied  fact,  that,  being  continually  and 
inevitably  in  the  presence  and  power  of  the 
Almighty,  you  yet  are  careless  of  this  infinitely 
the  most  important  circumstance  of  your  situa- 
tion. The  character  of  that  fact  would  be  ex- 
posed to  you  in  alarming  manifestation,  if  your 
reflection  should  cast  a  faithful  light  upon  it 
in  the  instances  in  which  you  may  have  the 
evidence  that  it  is  a  fact.  Fix  your  attention 
on  some  of  those  circumstances  which  will 
prove  to  you  that  you  are  "  without  God  in  the 
world,"  and  honestly  endeavor  to  see,  in  those 
exemplifications,  whether  it  be  possible  to  over- 
rate the  irrationality,  the  guilt,  and  the  danger. 
Thus,  for  instance,  when  you  feel  yourself  vigi- 
lantly, and  even  intensely  solicitous  about  your 
reputation  among  your  fellow-mortals,  as  if  the 
essence  of  your  happiness  depended  on  their 
opinion  of  you,  and  are  gratified  or  wounded  as 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  165 

that  opinion  honors  or  depreciates  you,  reflect, 
that  you  feel  no  such  concern,  and  perhaps 
never  have  felt  a  thousandth  j)art  of  the  meas- 
ure of  concern,  how  you  stand  in  the  account 
of  the  Governor  and  Judtje  of  the  world  ;  and 
then,  dwell  on  this  fact  with  judicial  considera- 
tion, and  answer  to  yourself  whether  there  be 
not  a  profound  depravity  in  such  a  state  of 
rriind.  When  you  have  been  spending  many 
hours  in  society,  with  a  lively  interchange  of 
sentiments,  with  your  attention  directed  to  va- 
rious persons,  and  with  variously  modified  inter- 
est in  being  in  tiieir  company,  reflect,  (for  may 
not  this  be  often  the  truth  ?)  that  you  hardly 
once,  all  the  while,  recollected  the  presence  of 
the  greatest  Being  in  the  universe  ;  and  then 
soberly  consider  what  a  grossness  of  spirit  is 
proved  by  such  an  oblivion.  A  show  of  hu- 
man countenances  and  figures,  a  circulation  of 
ordinary  converse,  with  some  intermingling  ex- 
citement of  vanity  and  competition,  were 
enough  to  preclude,  during  the  race  of  many 
thousands  of  your  moments,  all  recognition  of 
Him,  who  was  then  preserving  your  life,  in- 
specting your  heart,  witnessing  your  procedure  ; 
and  who  was  adored  by  whatever  nobler  spirits 
might  have  their  offices  to  perform  in  this  part 
of  the  terrestrial  scene.  Think  of  this,  and 
1>* 


166  LIV.NG   Ful\  IMMORTALITY. 

confess  tijat  such  a  complete  and  prolonged  ab- 
sence of  the  recollection  betrays  a  condition  of 
mind  most  refractory  to  the  training  for  that 
other  society,  where  his  presence  is  continually 
felt  as  the  one  most  impressive  fact,  and  most 
animating  cause  of  delight. 

It  may  be  allowed  to  descend  to  still  more 
special  illustrations.  We  may  suppose  one  of 
you  to  direct  his  look,  or  liis  walk,  over  a  piece 
of  ground,  in  which  he  has  tlie  rights  of  a 
proprietor — till  his  successor  shall  take  them. 
He  might  reflect,  that  this  space  of  earth  has 
more  occupied  his  thoughts  and  affections,  has 
been  beyond  comparison  a  more  interesting  re- 
ality to  him,  than  the  Author  and  Sustainer  of 
the  whole  creation.  Then  let  him  look  again 
on  the  soil,  exert  one  solemn  act  of  thouofht 
toward  him  by  whom,  and  in  whom,  all  things 
exist,  and  judge  whether  this  be  not  a  horrid 
impiety.  Another  of  you  has  gazed  upon,  and 
leaned  over,  the  material  which  represents 
wealth,  and  confers  the  power  of  it ;  he  has 
stood  by  his  god,  delighted  and  absorbed,  with- 
out thought  or  care  respecting  any  other,  in 
earth  or  heaven.  It  should  be  possible,  when 
he  shall  find  himself  in  this  situation  again,  to 
constrain  himself  to  one  effort  of  serious  reflec- 
tion ;  and  when  he  has  done  so,  let  him  tell 


LIVIXO  FOR  [MMORTAMTY.  1G7 

wlii'tlier  he  did  not  seem  to  hear  a  voice  say, 
"  Thy  money  j)erish  with  tliee."  Some  of  you 
may  be  men  of  a  more  refined  taste,  and  may 
have  drawn  into  your  possession  a  rich  collec- 
tion of  the  works  of  genius,  in  literature  and 
art.  Let  thorn  confess  to  themselves  whetlier 
they  have  not  contemplated  the  splendid  and 
growing  accumulation  with  a  delight,  a  care, 
and  a  pride,  of  incomparably  stronger  preva- 
lence in  the  mind,  than  any  sentiment  regard- 
ing the  Divinity.  To  be  thus  environed  with 
the  productions,  (even  though  they  little,  in 
truth,  consulted  them,)  of  the  most  vigorous 
and  cultivated  minds  of  many  regions  and  ages, 
constituted,  perhaps,  a  kind  of  heathen  elysium, 
in  which  they  were  insensible  of  any  necessity 
of  converse  with  the  perfect  Intelligence,  the 
Source  of  all  mental  light,  of  all  beauty  and 
grandeur.  But,  shall  their  dwelling  amidst  the 
collected  results  of  thinking,  be  itself  a  cause 
to  disable  them  for  reflection  ?  If  not,  let  them 
consider  what  is  the  true  quality  of  that  passion 
by  which  they  are  rendering  this  abode  the 
scene  of  a  voluntary  exile  from  **  the  Father  of 
lights,"  raising  as  it  were  a  wall,  constructed  of 
the  works  and  monuments  of  human  intellect, 
to  shut  themselves  up  from  his  communications. 
And  let  them  reflect  how  melancholy  it  must 


168  LIVING  FOR  liVl MORTALITY. 

be,  to  go  away  from  amidst  the  pomp  of  literary 
treasures,  poor,  (and  the  more  so  for  the  very 
passion  for  possessing  them,  and  the  idolatry  of 
them  as  possessed,)  in  all  the  attainments  and 
dispositions  preparatory  to  an  entrance  on  that 
scene  where  no  truth,  no  intellectual  glory,  no 
ideas  or  realities  of  sublimity  or  beauty,  can  be 
apprehended  separately  from  their  Divine  Orig- 
inal. Let  the  gratified  possessor  look  again  at 
the  imposing  array  of  the  vehicles  of  all  that 
has  been  the  most  powerful,  admirable,  and 
enchanting  in  human  thought  and  fancy,  but 
with  a  reflection  with  which  he  may  never  be- 
fore have  surveyed  the  spectacle.  Here  is  the 
intellectual  world  concentrated,  as  it  were,  and 
embodied  before  me.  It  is  but  a  small  por- 
tion of  it  which  the  brevity  of  life,  with  its 
many  employments  and  grievances,  will  permit 
to  be  of  any  avail  to  me  for  a  valuable  use; 
but  I  find  there  is  a  principle  operating,  which 
can  turn  the  whole  collectively  to  a  pernicious 
eflfect.  For,  the  more  I  delight  myself  in  being 
surrounded  with  this  afl^uence  of  the  produc- 
tions of  mind,  the  less  aril  I  disposed  to  com- 
munication with  Him  whose  living  influences 
on  my  spirit  can  alone  make  me  wise  and  hap- 
py. But  can  I  be  content  to  think  that  I  shall, 
after  a  little  while,  retire   from  this  proud  tern- 


LIVIJMG  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  1G9 

pie  to  the  honor  of  human  intellect,  actually 
floonied  to  take  with  me  an  unfitness  acquired 
in  it  for  the  life  of  intelligence  and  felicity  in 
the  immediate  presence  ol  God  ? 

Again,  some   of  you  might   be   addressed  as 
persons  raised  high  above  the  level  of  the  com- 
munity, in  wealth,  rank,   or  power,  or  all  these 
togetlier.     You,  of  this   order,  sometimes  look 
down  to  see  how    far   the    multitude  are  below. 
And    proud    indeed    would   your  position  be,  if, 
in  looking  down  from   your  eminence,   you  did 
not  descry  certam   things  which,  if  we  may  ex- 
press it   so,    dare  to   look  up,  and  dare,  though 
the  multitude  do  not,  to  ascend.     Against  such 
things  as  vexation,  pain,  sickness,  old  age,  and 
death,  your  lofty  station    is  not  embattled  ;  and 
their   commission   to  ravage   the    plain    below, 
contains  no   restriction   that  they  respect  your 
elevated    ground.     Still,    notwithstanding,   you 
are  highly   pleased  with  the  situation  which  ex- 
hibits you  in  such  splendor,  affords  such  variety 
of  gratifications,    and  gives  so  commanding   an 
ascendency   over   inferior   mankind.      You   in- 
dulge sometimes   in  the   luxury   of  verifying  to 
yourselves,    by  an  act   of  reflection,  what  a  for- 
tunate lot  it  is  that   you    possess  ;  and  the  ima- 
ges you    raise   to   augment  this  luxury,  by  con- 
trast with  what  you   can   the  most  forcibly  rep- 


170  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

resent  to  yourselves  as  infelicity,  are  those  of  a 
condition  in  life  insignificant,  obscure,  and  indi- 
gent.    Til  is  proud  complacency  would  perhaps 
be  heightened,    if  you  could  have   a   disclosure 
fully  made  to  you  of  the  mortification  and  envy 
felt,  by  many  tens   of  thousands,  in  comparing 
their   situation  with  yours.     Indeed   you    some- 
times  do,   some  of  you,   gratify   yourselves  by 
imagining  this.     But,  amidst  all  the  satisfaction 
or    exultation,    have    you    no    perception    of  a 
shade    stealina^   over    the    tract    of    brio;htness 
where  you  are   walking   in  pride  ;  an  ominous 
gloom,  charged  with  deep    meaning,   "  instinct 
itself  with  spirit,"    and   giving  intin)ation   of  a 
Being  who  knows   no   envy  or   admiration,  and 
is  **  no   respecter   of  persons?"     True,  there  is 
very  much  in  your  situation  to  prevent  all  such 
perceptions.      It   is   striking   to   consider    what 
resources   it  affords   for   escaping   or  expelling 
the  invasion  of  all  serious  thought   that  should 
make   any    reference   to   heaven.     The   means 
you   possess    for  change   of   place,    and    every 
other  stimulant   variety  ;  the  pomp  and  show  of 
life;  the  routine  of  ceremony  ;  the  amusements 
offering  in    rapid   and    endless   succession ;  the 
epicurean    gratifications;    and,   in   the   case  of 
some  of  you,  the  extensive  concerns  of  business 
and  enterprise,  or   tlie  management  of  impor- 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  171 

tant  public  affairs  ; — all  those  are  of  mighty 
efficacy,  as  long  as  you  enjoy  tolerable  health, 
for  averting  the  admonitions  of  a  more  solemn 
interest.  On  every  side  to  which  you  turn,  the 
"  god  of  this  world"  has  disposed  his  enchant- 
ments, that  you  should  not  see  the  objects 
which  are  making  signs  to  you  by  authority  of 
heaven,  nor  hear  their  call.  And  you  are 
pleased  to  have  it  so ;  as  the  people  of  former 
ages,  when  that  sj)ectacle  of  rare  appearance  in 
their  hemisphere,  which  they  denominated  the 
blazing  star,  was  regarded  as  of  direful  presage, 
were  glad  that  aii  unbroken  array  of  clouds 
should  veil  the  sky,  to  yield  them  a  temporary 
but  thoughtless  alleviation  of  their  alarm,  by 
concealing  the  dreaded  phenomenon.  If  you 
could  resolve  on  an  exercise  of  reflection,  to  as- 
certain the  causes  of  the  gratification  you  feel 
in  these  pomps,  diversities,  luxuries,  and  occu- 
pations, you  would  find  a  very  material  one  to 
be,  that  they  save  you  from  any  serious  and 
prolonged  recognition  of  the  Almighty,  and  of 
those  great  subjects  inseparable  from  the  idea 
of  him.  You  would  instantly  be  sensible  that 
you  are  so  estranged  from  him  ;  and  would  dis- 
cover that  you  have  been  thanking  these  be- 
guilers  for  assisting  you  to  be  so. 

But  is  not  this  a  most  perverted  and  perilous 


172  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

condition  ?  With  the  full  consent  of  your  will, 
you  suffer  this  worldly  grandeur,  this  prosper- 
ity, these  quickly  successive  and  variegated 
gratifications,  to  have  the  effect,  that  whatever 
is  to  be  dreaded  from  the  justice  and  disappro- 
bation of  a  God  neglected  and  despised,  ap- 
proaches still  more  and  more  near,  and  hovers 
imminently  over  you,  without  being  seen  or  ap- 
prehended ;  as  the  monarch  of  Babylon's  sump- 
tuous revelry  was  the  very  cause  that  the  de- 
stroyer of  all  that  triumph  could  come  so  close 
without  being  perceived.  Think  also  of  the 
circumstance  that,  while  you  are  placed,  by  the 
possession  of  the  high  advantages  (that  is,  what 
may  and  ought  to  be  advantages)  of  your  situa- 
tion, under  a  most  cogent  responsibility  to  God 
for  their  use,  you  suffer  this  very  possession  to 
render  you  thoughtless  of  this  responsibility. 
What  will  prove  to  be  the  guilt  and  the  conse- 
quence of  such  conduct  towards  him  ?  To 
complete  the  estimate  of  such  a  condition, 
consider  how  certainly  all  this  pageant  of  your 
pride,  pomp,  and  luxury,  will  break  up,  and  be 
gone,  when  the  angel  of  death  alights  by  you, 
to  send  your  spirits,  divested,  disenchanted,  but 
unprepared,  to  their  great  account.  A  funeral 
parade  over  your  dust  will  seem  as  if  expressly 
designed  in  mockery  of  your  past  grandeur,  by 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALI'J'Y.  173 

celebrating  your  ejection  from  it ;  and  will 
serve  your  equally  thoughtless  successors  for  a 
variety  in  the  exhibition  of  their  pride  and 
state. 

In  all  the  ranks  of  society,  (below  the  high- 
est,) there  are  very  many  actuated  by  a  restless 
ambition  to  obtain  the  notice  and  conceded  ac- 
quaintance of  those  above  them.  In  turning 
our  observations,  for  a  moment,  to  persons  of 
this  description,  we  might  appeal  to  their  own 
consciousness  of  what  it  is  that  they  allow  to 
take  precedence  of  ail  thoughts  and  solicitudes 
relating  to  God.  There  is  sometimes  stealing 
upon  you  a  sentiment  of  mortification  that  your 
lot  had  not  been  cast  in  a  hijiher  rank,  and  that 
it  is  in  vain  to  think  of  attaining  the  envied 
station.  Fortunately  for  your  self-complacency, 
you  can  turn  this  chagrin  into  an  active  spirit 
for  gaining  the  next  best  object  in  your  esteem, 
that  is,  to  be  on  such  terms  with  those  above 
you  as  shall  gratify  both  your  pride  and  your 
vanity.  You  aspire  eagerly  to  be  acknowl- 
edged by  them,  and  to  be  seen  to  be  acknowl- 
edged, as  persons  of  some  account  in  their  esti- 
mation. You  work  assiduously,  by  manners 
expressive  of  deference,  by  adulation,  when  you 
can  venture  to  offer  it,  by  officious  and  volun- 
tary services,  and  some  of  you  by  gross  servility, 
16 


174  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

to  purchase  their  favorable  attention.  And 
when  a  degree  of  it  is  conferred  on  you,  in  a 
manner  not  too  palpably  that  of  condescension, 
(though  you  are  not,  perhaps,  very  fastidious 
on  this  point,)  you  are  elated  as  if  you  had  ac- 
quired some  great  accession  of  intrinsic  worth. 
You  solicitously  watch  for  still  more  unequivo- 
cal tokens  of  the  gracious  disposition,  and  for 
occasions  of  putting  yourselves  in  the  way  to 
receive  them.  And  the  progress  of  your  suc- 
cess is  probably  marked  by  a  more  stately  or  a 
more  condescendino^  manner,  assumed  toward 
yovr  inferiors.  Some  of  you,  of  prouder  tem- 
perament, and  vigorous  talent,  disdaining  all 
the  servile  expedients,  aspire  to  command  the 
estimation  and  respectful  attention  of  the  higher 
favorites  of  fortune.  And  when  you  have  in  a 
measure  done  so,  you  exult  as  if  it  were  some 
grand  victory.  It  appears  to  you  a  splendid 
achievement  to  have  conquered  possession,  by 
means  of  solely  personal  qualifications,  of  a 
ground  where  you  stand  on  nearly  an  equality, 
in  effect,  with  persons  whose  honors  and  im- 
portance in  the  world  may  consist  alone  in  the 
splendor  of  their  external  circumstances.  You 
may  affect  to  depreciate  this  extrinsic  impor- 
tance of  theirs ;  but  you  are  vastly  gratified  by. 
that  kind   of  community   with   them  to  which 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  J  75 

your  abilities  and  exertions  have  mounted  you. 
— Thus,  "  man  worships  man,"  as  a  method 
instinctively  adopted  in  aid  of  each  man's  wor- 
ship ondmsclf. 

Now  this  habitual  passion  and  labor  to  re- 
alize some  imaginary  element  of  well-being  in 
the  good  graces  of  your  superior  fellow-mortals, 
may  have  so  debased  the  temper  of  your  spirit, 
that  any  admonition  suggested  to  withdraw  and 
raise  your  thoughts  toward  him  who  is  su- 
preme to  judge,  to  bless,  and  to  confer  honor, 
may  be  like  calling  the  attention  of  an  un- 
cultivated rustic  to  the  sublimities  of  astron- 
omy. The  infinite  greatness  of  God  above  all 
things,  the  obligation  of  a  constant  reference 
to  him,  the  honor  that  comes  from  him,  the 
duty  of  aspiring  to  be  acknowledged  by  him 
with  a|)probation,  and  the  glory  of  possessing 
it, — all  these  are  but  feeble  glimpses  on  your 
apprehension.  But  this  is  a  degraded  and 
guilty  predicament.  Endeavor  to  think  wliat  it 
must  be  to  be  valuing  yourselves  just  so  much 
the  more,  in  proportion  as  you  succeed  in  pre- 
vailing on  these  earthen  domi-gods  of  your 
prostrate  superstition  to  accej)t,  and  sparingly 
reward,  the  homage  which  you  refuse  to  the 
Almighty.  Think  what  it  is  to  watch  and  wait 
with  anxiety,  with  manoeuvres  of  insinuation, 
with   patience   resolutely    maintained,  or  impa- 


176  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

tience  unavailingly  indulged,  and  even  with 
sacrifices  and  self-denial,  for  looks  and  expres- 
sions of  complaisance,  acknowledging  you  as 
not  unknown  or  despised,  from  creatures  of 
your  own  kind,  possibly  of  little  worth,  and  in- 
significant but  for  their  appendages  of  fortune, 
so  soon  to  be  resigned  ;  while  you  are  totally 
regardless  of  that  sovereign  Power  who  is  in- 
viting you  to  the  honor  of  being  acquainted 
with  Him.  And  when  your  vanity  is  gratified, 
in  thinking  how  you  stand  exhibited  in  the 
view  of  other  men  as  enjoying  a  measure  of  the 
dearly  bought  privilege,  one  serious  reflection 
might  expose  to  you  what  ignominy  inexpressi- 
ble it  is,  to  be  elated  at  appearing  before  a  por- 
tion of  society  with  the  distinction  of  some  flat- 
tering attention  from  your  superiors,  and  to  be 
perfectly  indifferent  in  what  account  you  shall 
be  seen  to  be  held  by  the  Judge  of  the  world, 
when  men  and  angels  will  be  the  witnesses  of 
the  estimation. 

Men  of  the  world  might  be  addressed  on  one 
other  very  general  characteristic  of  their  spirit 
and  proceeding.  Many  of  you  are  zealously 
intent  on  the  advancement  and  amply  endowed 
establishment  of  your  families  ;  ambitiously 
compassing  for  them,  at  whatever  moral  cost  or 
hazard,  the  utmost  quantity  of  the  materials  of 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  177 

prosperity.  Under  the  consciousness,  though 
little  and  reluctantly  brought  into  any  distinct- 
ness of  thought,  that  your  own  tenure  is  but  for 
a  very  limited  term,  the  mind  instinctively  seeks 
to  escape  into  any  factitious  mode  of  extending 
the  interest  of  mortal  existence,  and  yields  to 
some  undefined  sort  of  deception,  as  if  in  your 
surviving  descendants  you  were  to  retain  some 
kind  of  sympathetic  life  yourselves.  In  this 
enigmatical  feeling,  for  yourselves  and  them, 
you  study,  and  scheme,  and  toil,  to  place  them 
on  the  most  advantageous  ground,  or  in  the 
way  to  attain  it.  And  this  being  effected,  the 
great  business  for  them  is  accomplished  !  How 
often  have  we  been  struck  with  wonder  in  ob- 
serving some  of  you,  dwelling  with  delight  and 
pride  on  the  prosperous  introduction  into  life, 
and  the  fine  prospects,  of  one  and  another 
branch  of  your  family,  and  evidently  with  an 
entire  inadvertence  to  any  greater  concern 
atTecting  their  welfare.  Secure  the  primary 
object,  of  their  passing  through  life  in  a  hand- 
some style,  in  fair  repute,  and  with  plenty  of 
the  world's  accommodations  at  their  command, 
and  that  other  affair,  of  their  being  accountable 
to  God,  of  its  beintr  their  chief  business  in  life 
to  be  his  servants,  may  be  left  as  an  insignifi- 
cant matter,   about  which  you  do  not,  and  they 


178  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

need  not,  take  any  trouble.  You  are  thus  wil- 
Jing  to  be  destitute  of  religion  virtually  beyond 
your  individual  capacity,  and  to  take  on  you 
the  weight  of  responsibility  for  its  exclusion 
from  your  relative  sphere.  You  are  consent- 
ing, as  it  were,  to  be  irreligious  both  in  your- 
selves and  in  those  who  are  to  survive  you  ; 
saying,  Let  us  form  a  family  compact  for  the 
prolongation  of  impiety  ;  a  patriarch  and  a  pos- 
terity estranged  from  the  Father  in  heaven. 
But,  thus  to  render  yourselves  expressly  their 
authorities  for  living  without  God,  is  it  not  a 
most  sinister  and  fearful  office  that  you  per- 
form for  them?  When  they  shall  find  that  all 
you  have  wished  and  schemed  for  them,  and 
incited  them  to  attain,  has  left  their  main  in- 
terest abandoned  to  ruin  ;  that  paternal  care 
has  operated  systematically  to  betray  them  out 
of  all  recollection  and  all  favor  of  the  mightiest 
Patron,  what  will  be  the  language  of  the  thanks 
they  will  return  you  ?  And  think  what  it  will 
be  to  be  associated  with  them  in  the  natural 
result  of  this  present  estrangement  from  him,  in 
a  sad  exile,  at  last,  from  his  presence.  And 
see,  in  this  condition,  and  in  that  prospect,  how 
alienation  from  God  destroys  the  value  of  that 
one  affection  which  is  always  represented  as  the 
most  genuine  and  faithful  of  human  charities. 


LIV1N(;  FOR  I.M.MORTAL[TV.  179 

These  exemplincations,  with  the  questions 
and  censures  on  ihum,  have  been  attempted 
in  a  form  to  lead  you,  men  of  the  world,  into 
such  reflection  as  would  verify  to  your  own 
minds,  that  your  prevailing  spirit  actually  does 
disown  your  relations  to  God,  that  it  is  irrelig- 
ion  ;  and  to  expose  to  you  that  such  a  condition 
is  fatally  wrong.  They  have  represented  that 
irreligion  chiefly  as  it  is  apparent  in  reference 
to  the  more  commanding  and  awful  characters 
in  which  the  Divine  Being  is  to  be  acknowl- 
edged,  as  supremely  great  and  powerful,  as 
present  with  perfect  intelligence  through  all  ex- 
istence, as  the  observer  and  judge  of  all  moral 
agents.  We  should  have  more  distinctly  ad- 
monished you  to  take  account  how  you  are 
affected  toward  him  in  his  character  of  sover- 
eign goodness,  in  which  you  might  have  access 
to  find  infinite  resources  for  felicity.  Reflect 
what  it  is  that  you  do,  in  declining  all  commu- 
nication with  him  in  this  relation.  In  a  certain 
possible  state  of  your  spirit  toward  him,  you 
would  have  the  sense  of  his  attention  resting  on 
you,  directly  and  individually,  as  a  favored 
creature,  with  emanations  of  benignity  which 
would  breathe  a  deep  emphatic  vitality  into 
your  soul.  And  from  all  the  objects  and  inter- 
ests which  would  diversely  engage  your  thoughts 


180  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

and  affections,  you  would  return,  at  intervals, 
to  be  sensibly  in  the  presence  of  a  Divine 
Friend,  and  realize  it  still  again  as  both  the  de- 
light  and  the  energy  of  your  existence.  Think, 
then,  what  it  is  to  be  so  compacted  and  con- 
substantial,  as  it  were,  with  the  world,  as  in 
effect  to  say,  Nothing  of  all  this  is  mine,  and 
for  nothing  of  all  this  do  I  care.  I  have  no 
adaptation  nor  desire  to  reciprocate  sentiments 
with  any  being  of  higher  order  than  myself. 
If  God  do  really  offer  himself  for  such  commu- 
nication with  men,  1  must  tbrego  the  privilege, 
of  which  1  could  have  no  possession  without, 
I  know  not  what,  vast  chiuige  in  my  spirit  and 
habits.  But  indeed  I  have  no  conception  of 
such  a  mystical  source  of  delight.  How  should 
any  one  receive  tokens  of  special  favor,  respon- 
sive to  his  own  emotions  and  aspirations, 
from  a  Being  who  never  appears  nor  speaks 
to  the  world,  and  whose  concern  is  with  the 
wide  creation  as  a  whole?  However  it  may 
be,  such  a  spiritual  sympathy  is  not  for  my 
experience ;  and  I  must  content  myself  with 
such  good  as  I  can  draw  from  intercourse 
with  the  objects  in  the  scene  around  me. 
With  these  is  my  soul  in  communion  ;  they 
are  my  happiness;  and  do  not  disturb  me 
with  warnings  of  what  it  will  be  to  go  into  the 


MVi.\(;  F(iR  i.M.MnirrAi.ri'V.  181 

presence  of  God  as  a  stranger  when  I  must 
leave  them.  1  hope  that,  in  some  way  or  other, 
I  sliali  have  sufficiently  made  peace  with  him, 
against  the  time  when  I  am  to  find  myself 
present  with  liini,  and  no  longer  vvitli  them. 


CHAPTER    VIII. 

MEN  OF  THE  WORLD,  WHILE  THEY  DISTRUST  AND 
ENVY  EACH  OTHER,  AS  RIVALS  IN  THEIR  SORDID 
PURSUITS,  VOLUNTARILY  RENOUNCE  THE  SOCI- 
ETY AND  CONFIDENCE  OF  THE  MOST  ESTIMABLE 
PERSONS. 

If  your  devotedness  to  the  world  be  thus  a 
fatal  alienation  from  God,  it  is  comparatively 
but  little  to  add,  that  it  places  you  out  of  frater- 
nity of  feeling  and  character  with  the  best  and 
noblest  of  mankind.  This  may  generally  not 
cause  you  much  mortification  ;  and,  lest  it 
should  do  so,  you  have  recourse  to  the  expedi- 
ent of  depreciating  the  religious  character,  as 
exemplified  in  those  who  professedly  bear  it. 
But  your  attention    must   have   been  sometimes 


182  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

arrested  by  such  examples,  on  record  or  in  the 
living  world,  as  defied  your  self-defensive  mal- 
ice. You  have  beheld  a  real,  unquestionable 
devotion  to  God,  to  truth,  to  holiness,  and  to 
another  world.  You  have  observed  men  living 
in  habitual  acknowledgment  of  the  divine  pres- 
ence and  authority  ;  preserving  a  faithful  con- 
science and  obeying  it,  in  scenes  of  temptation  ; 
maintaining  fidelity  to  their  high  principle 
through  all  changes  of  season  and  condition  ; 
amidst  the  troubles  of  their  lot  deriving  conso- 
lation from  above  and  from  hereafter  ;  through- 
out their  mortal  course  still  looking  forward  to 
the  end  ;  and  terminating  it  in  the  assurance 
that  they  were  **  dying  in  the  Lord."  There 
was  left  you  no  cause  or  power  to  doubt  that 
this  was  all  genuine,  and  you  felt  self-convicted 
of  baseness,  if  you  affected  to  question  it.  You 
were  also  constrained  to  admit,  that  these  are 
the  true  exemplifications  of  religion  ;  and  that, 
therefore,  all  cavils  raised  against  it  from  the 
unworthy  character  of  many  of  its  ostensible 
adherents,  are  wickedly  dishonest.  To  say 
that  but  few  professed  religionists  exhibit  this 
combination  of  qualities  in  such  high  excel- 
lence, is  saying  nothing,  unless  you  could  as- 
sert that  such  excellence,  when  it  does  exist, 


LIVING  FOR  IMMtjRTALrrV.  183 

is   something   more,    or   sometiiing    else,  than 
religion. 

It  is  a  matter  of  great  difficulty  to  decide, 
what  degree  of  deficiency  of  such  a  character 
may  not  be  incompatible  with  the  essential  of 
personal  religion.  But  at  all  events,  here  are 
placed  in  your  view  those  whom  religion  has 
rendered  the  very  best  of  the  human  race.  Nor 
can  you  evade  the  point  for  which  we  cite 
them  by  saying,  they  were  recluses  and  as- 
cetics, and  therefore  inappropriate  examples  for 
any  use  of  condemnatory  comparison  with  you, 
who  are  necessarily  occupied  with  the  business 
of  the  world.  For  many  of  them  were  much 
and  variously  employed  in  that  business ;  and 
showed  how  religion  may  be  mingled  with  sec- 
ular interests  and  transactions,  so  as  to  retain 
its  own  briffhtness  and  throw  lustre  on  them. 

Now,  we  are  confident  you  cannot  deny  that 
there  are  moments  of  transient  light  on  your 
mind,  when  the  conviction  comes  upon  you, 
that  this  is  the  worthiest,  noblest,  most  admi- 
rable order  of  human  character ;  however  in- 
distinctly you  may  apprehend  some  of  the  most 
refined  principles  on  which  it  is  formed,  and 
however  disposed  you  may  be  to  the  iniputation 
of  mysticism  and  excess.  On  any  question 
arising  in   your   reflections,   irho   are   the  most 


1  84  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY, 

truly  estimable  and  dignified,  the  most  wise 
and  the  most  safe,  your  thoughts  involuntarily 
glance  toward  this  class  of  men,  and  you  can- 
not make  them  fix  on  any  other.  They  are  the 
honorable  and  select  of  mankind,  the  '*  people 
favored  of  the  Lord,"  and  Balaam  cannot  blast 
or  degrade  them  for  you. 

And  shall  it  be  your  only  regret  that  you 
cannot  reduce  them  to  your  own  level  1  Would 
you  deem  it  a  desirable  thing  that  they  could 
be  re-converted  (such  as  are  living)  to  that 
worldly  character  which  now  separates  you  so 
far  from  their  community  ;  so  that  there  should 
be  none  to  shine  in  contrast  with  you,  as  ex- 
emplifying the  possible  glory  of  that  nature 
which  you  degrade  ?  Reflect  soberly  whether, 
if  you  did  see,  and  feel,  and  act,  like  the  best 
of  those  men,  it  would  not  be  a  most  happy 
change  from  your  present  condition.  Would  it 
not  be  happy  that  the  state  of  your  mind  cor- 
responded to  one  inspiring  sentiment  of  these 
men, — that  they  have  a  Master  in  heaven  whom 
it  is  delightful  to  serve ;  to  another,  that  no 
faithful  effort  or  sacrifice  will,  as  to  its  reward, 
be  lost ;  to  another,  that  every  victory  over  sin 
surpasses  the  value  of  all  worldly  successes  or 
triumphs  ;  to  another,  that  their  guilt  is  par- 
doned through   the  divine   mercy;  to  another, 


LIVING  FOR  IM.MORTALLTY.  185 

that  they,  and  all  their  concerns,  are  under  a 
sovereign  guardianship  which  can  never  err  or 
fail,  and  that,  therefore,  in  every  juncture  they 
have  the  nnightieyt  power  in  the  universe  at 
hand  for  their  assistance ;  and  to  still  another, 
that  one  sensible  interest  in  transacting  the  suc- 
cessive affairs  assigned  them  in  this  world,  is 
in  the  circumstance,  that  eacii  one  accomplish- 
ed has  carried  them  so  much  farther  toward 
quilting  the  whole,  for  something  better  ?  Com- 
prehend in  the  account  whatever  other  things 
form  a  part  of  the  difference  which  religion 
makes  between  tiiem  and  you  ;  allow  this 
difference  to  verify  itself  to  you  as  a  reality  ; 
and  then  say  whether  you  can  be  fully  content 
and  self-complacent  in  standing  thus  dissocia- 
ted. Estimate  impartially  any  favorite  worldly 
object,  pursued  or  possessed,  and  think  whether 
that  would  not  be  well  surrendered  to  place 
you  in  a  community  of  situation  with  these 
Christian  spirits.  In  a  lucid  hour,  you  cannot 
but  perceive  that,  by  being  associated  with 
them  in  congeniality  of  feeling  and  action,  you 
would  be  in  harmony  with  those  grand  laws 
and  relations  of  your  existence  with  which  you 
are  now  at  variance,  and  often  at  war.  Those 
bonds  of  connexion  with  the  highest  objects, 
adamantine  bonds,  which  with  all  your  striving 
17 


186  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

you  cannot  break,  but  which  you  now  feel^ 
when  recognized  at  ali,  as  fatal  chains  to  what 
you  cannot  love,  and  to  a  doom  which  you 
dread  and  cannot  escape,  would  then  be  vital 
conductors  through  which  you  would  communi- 
cate with  heaven.  United  to  that  assembly, 
you  would  stand  on  a  ground  where  beams 
descend  from  the  eternal  sun,  where  angels 
visit,  where  afflictions  are  turned  to  blessings, 
where  death  is  divested  of  his  terrors.  You 
would  be  able  to  say,  with  cordial  emphasis, 
Wherever  their  souls  shall  be,  there  let  mine 
be  forever. 

On  the  other  hand,  look  at  the  men  with 
whom  you  are  now  conjoined  and  assimilated. 
As  your  own  men  of  the  world,  the  models  to 
which  you  conform  yourselves,  the  class  with 
whose  destiny  you  are  committing  your  own,  it 
might  be  presumed  they  should  have  your  ap- 
probation, your  confidence,  your  sincere  affec- 
tion. But  is  it  so?  Take  an  honest  account 
of  what  you  think  of  them,  in  moments  when 
you  are  drawn  a  little  aside  from  the  bustle  in 
which  you  are  mingled  with  them,  and  when, 
for  a  short  time,  you  feel  your  league  with 
them  somewhat  relaxed.  At  such  times,  you 
will  have  found  yourself  looking  at  them  with 
a  cold,   keen,  judicial   inspection  ;  recalling  to 


LIVING  FOR  I.MiMORTALITY.  187 

tniud  tlioir  conduct,  toward  one  another  or 
yourself;  observing  tlieir  motives,  and  admit- 
ting an  estimate  of  these  men  of  your  prefer- 
ence and  fraternity.  The  narrowness  of  their 
purposes,  their  seifisliness,  the  world-hardened 
cast  of  their  feelings,  and  their  unsound  prin- 
ciples, stood  palpably  exposed  in  your  view. 
Confess  how  often  you  have  been  thrown  into  a 
very  different  train  of  thinking  of  them  from 
that  of  considering  them  as  your  friends^  your 
own  chosen  favorite  class.  Confess  that  you 
do  not,  and  cannot,  feel  a  genuine  esteem  for 
them,  not  to  say  affection  or  veneration.  You 
do  not  repose  a  tranquil  confidence  in  them. 
You  have  to  watch,  and  guard,  and  surround 
yourselves  with  every  precaution.  With  many 
of  them  you  find  yourselves  in  undisguised 
competition  ;  and  with  your  very  allies  and  co- 
adjutors you  dare  not  remit  the  exercise  of  a 
silent  vigilance  on  their  movements,  and  all  the 
indications  of  their  dispositions  and  designs, — 
a  vigilance  which,  you  need  not  doubt,  is  exer- 
cised on  you  in  return.  What  invaluable 
beings  you  are  to  one  another,  if  you  be  right 
in  this  reciprocal  distrust  ! 

Even  as  to  reliixion,  careless  as  you  are  about 
it,  you  occasionally  feel  a  certain  indistinct  im- 
pression,  that  some  other  worldly  men   are  too 


1S8  MVING   FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

careless  ;  especially  when  you  observe  any  of 
them  in  declining  health,  or  far  advanced  in 
age,  as  eagerly  intent  on  worldly  pursuits  as  if 
they  had  the  assurance  of  half  a  century  of  life 
before  them.  You  could  not  avoid  some  per- 
ception of  incongruity  in  this,  which  has  be- 
trayed you  into  the  expression.  It  is  really  time 
for  that  man  to  begin  to  think  a  little  of  other 
concerns.  It  may  very  possibly  have  happened 
to  you  to  be  disgusted,  and  almost  shocked,  to 
see  one  of  your  thorough  men  of  the  world  re- 
suming all  his  ease,  vivacity,  and  ambition,  for 
playing  his  part  in  it,  with  hardly  the  shortest 
interval  after  some  sad  event  in  his  family  pr 
nearest  connexions.  If  such  an  event  brought 
him  an  accession  of  temporal  advantage,  he 
waited,  perhaps,  barely  "  one  little  month,"  to 
rush,  with  the  impulse  of  his  new  forces,  and 
the  exultation  of  having  acquired  them,  into  the 
busiest  or  the  gayest  scenes  of  life.  Suppos- 
ing, again,  that  you  have  been  dangerously  ill, 
and  visited  by  one  of  your  fraternity,  you  have 
seen  what  a  man  of  the  world  can  do  in  the 
way  of  consolation.  What  was  the  balm  which 
that  physician  applied  ?  If  you  could  not  be- 
lieve the  assurances  which  he  made  to  you, 
(whether  he  thought  so  or  not,)  that  you  would 


L[VING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  189 

recover,   what  resource   was    presented   to  you 
besides  ? 

In  short,  you  will  not  deny  that,  if  there 
could  be  given  you  what  you  could  believe  to 
be  an  undeceptive  presage,  that  though  associ- 
ated with  the  men  of  the  world  now,  you 
should  not  be  so  hereafter,  it  would  please  you 
exceedingly.  We  mean,  it  would  do  so  at 
those  more  thoughtful  seasons,  when  the  real 
quality  of  your  worldly  association,  its  heart- 
Jessness,  its  want  of  mutual  approbation,  its 
poverty  of  the  means  of  alleviating  sorrow,  and 
its  destitution  of  moral  dignity,  are  exposed,  in 
a  degree,  to  your  reluctant  apprehension  ;  and 
when  to  all  this  is  added,  that  its  advantages 
and  pleasures,  whatever  they  may  be,  are  lim- 
ited, both  in  fact  and  hope,  to  a  diminutive 
portion  of  your  existence.  This  closing  con- 
sideration throws  a  deeply  melancholy  charac- 
ter over  the  whole  vast  spectacle  or  your  multi- 
tudes and  activities.  A  crowd  of  human  beings 
in  prodigious  ceaseless  stir  to  keep  the  dust  of 
the  earth  in  motion,  and  then  to  sink  into  it, 
while  all  beyond  is  darkness  and  desolation  ! 
It  is  as  if  a  great  army,  appointed  to  march 
on  some  magnificent  enterprise  of  distant  con- 
quest, should  confine  themselves  to  waste  all 
their  energy  in  an  idle  tumuli  of  strifes  and 
17* 


190  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

revellings  in  their  camp,  and  obstinately  stay 
on  the  ground  to  perish  away,  and  be  interred 
there. 


CHAPTER    rx . 

THE    IRRELIGIOUS    AND  SORDID  DO  NOT    ENJOY   THE 
PRESENT    LIFE,   AND    MEET  DNMINGLED  WRETCH- 
EDNESS   IN    THE    FUTURE. 
I 

On  a  whole  view  of  these  representations, 
it  must  needs  appear,  that,  in  your  devotion 
to  the  world,  you  are  losing  the  grand  object  of 
your  existence.  This  is  the  plain  brief  sen- 
tence on  your  course  of  life.  And  it  is  most 
striking  to  think  how  insignificantly  it  may 
sound  to  you,  whose  guilt  and  calamity  it  pro- 
nounces. Will  you  say  what  combination  of 
words  that  you  could  hear,  would  pass  more 
lightly  off.  You  have  heard  it,  and,  perhaps 
within  a  few  minutes  after,  retained  in  your 
consciousness  no  trace  of  any  thing  impressive 
having  been  made  sensible  to  your  mind.  Are 
you  not  tempted  to  repeat  it,  for  the  mere  curi- 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  191 

osity  of  observing  how  much  at  ease  you  can 
be  with  what  seems  of  such  formidable  im- 
port ;  as  if  you  were  playing  with  a  snake, 
rendered  harmless  by  tiie  deprivation  of  its 
fangs,  or  by  your  possessing  the  Egyptian's 
charm  against  them.  Repeat  the  sentence, 
which  affirms  you  are  disowning  and  losing  the 
great  purpose  for  which  you  are  sent  into  the 
world,  and  smile  at  the  seriousness  which 
thinks  it  an  expression  of  fearful  meaning. 
Say  you  are  sensible  of  nothing  lost,  as  long  as 
the  good  things  of  the  world  are  gained. 
**  Thou  sayest,  I  am  rich,  and  increased  with 
goods,  and  have  need  of  nothing  ;  and  knowest 
not  that  thou  art  wretched,  and  miserable,  and 
poor,  and  blind,  and  naked  V  It  is  not,  how- 
ever, that  you  are  incapable  of  being  profoundly 
affected  by  the  short  proposition  in  words  of 
something  disastrous  in  your  situation.  The 
iew  words  that  should  announce  to  you  that 
your  house,  or  other  valuable  property,  was  in 
flames  ;  or  that,  (supposing  you  a  trafficker  by 
sea,)  a  ship,  in  which  you  had  an  important 
venture,  had  been  last  seen  driving,  in  a  shat- 
tered state,  at  the  mercy  of  a  storm ;  or  the 
judgment  positively  signified  to  you  on  a  topi- 
cal disease,  that  you  could  be  relieved  only  by 
a  frightful  amputation  ;  or  the  most  laconic 
whisper  that  should  apprize  you  of  a  design 


192  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

formed  against  your  life  ;  would  produce  such  an 
intense  excitement,  as  if  all  your  strongest  past 
emotions,  extinct  and  almost  forgotten,  came, 
as  by  a  general  resurrection,  again  to  life,  com- 
bined in  one  tumultuous  alarm.  And  yet  the 
melancholy  truth,  pressed  upon  you  in  admo- 
nition, that  the  primary  object  of  life,  the  grand 
venture  and  value  of  your  existence,  is  thus  far 
lost,  and  in  the  course  to  be  finally  lost, 
through  your  devotion  to  the  world,  may  leave 
your  mind  unmoved,  to  await  the  stronger  im- 
pression of  the  next  inconsiderable  temporal 
misfortune. 

But  you  are  awaiting  also,  little  as  you  may 
apprehend  or  care  for  it,  impressions  of  another 
order,  and  from  another  cause.  They  are  re- 
served, most  inevitably  to  come,  after  a  certain 
succession,  longer  or  shorter,  of  emotions  from 
ordinary  causes  shall  have  had  their  times  and 
be  gone  by.  A  thoughtful  religious  mind  often 
perceives  intimations  concerning  you,  pro- 
phetic images,  as  it  were  mingling  with  the 
sight  of  your  persons,  while  it  beholds  you  thus 
absorbed  in  worldly  interests,  and  insensible  of 
what  you  are  doing  in  throwing  away  an  infi- 
nitely greater.  That  man,  and  that  other,  how 
little  do  they  care  that  all  the  powers  of  their 
being,  and  periods  of  their  time,  are  useless  for 
the  noblest  and   the   absolutely   indispensable 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  193 

purpose  of  life  !  Plow  content  that  what  they 
are  acquiring  should  be  at  the  cost  of  what 
they  are  losing!  How  easily  they  can  say,  in 
effect,  **  Get  thee  behind  me,"  to  any  thing 
that  would  tell  them  what  it  is  tliat  they  are 
sacriHcincr  to  their  idol,  and  warn  them  of  the 
consequence.  But,  to  each  of  tliem  an  hour  is 
coming,  at  some  certain  distance  in  ai)proach- 
ing  time,  w^hen  they  will  awake  from  the  in- 
fatuation, to  the  surprise  and  dismay  of  seeing 
that  their  life  has  been  so  far  in  vain.  They 
will  look  back  to  behold  it,  with  all  its  fair  and 
precious  possibilities,  blasted  and  desolated  by 
their  having  passed  over  it.  They  will  look 
back  to  measure  how  far  it  micrht  have  carried 
thera  on  toward  the  possession  of  incorruptible 
treasures,  unfading  honors,  an  eternal  inheri- 
tance ;  and  then  to  acknowledge  the  miserable 
fact,  that  it  has  not  advanced  them  one  stage 
or  step.  It  will.  come,-^the  hour  which  is 
charged  with  the  destination  to  afflict  them. 
There  may  be  temporal  grievances  or  misfor- 
tunes, affixed  by  divine  appointment  to  certain 
parts  of  the  time  coming  on  ;  but  infallibly 
there  is,  somewhere  in  the  train,  the  hour 
commissioned  to  bear  the  yet  unkindled  ele- 
ment which  will  flame  against  their  consciences. 
Will  it  be  while  there  are  yet  to  follow  days  of 
protracted    grace,   and   possible   "  newness   of 


194  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

life  ;"  or  will  it  be  the  conclusion  of  their  time, 
and  lighten  on  them  only  that  they  may  read 
the  sentence  of  an  inevitable  doom  ?  Or  is  the 
appointed  moment,  of  that  awakening  to  the 
conviction  that  life  has  been  expended  in  vain, 
reserved  to  come  after  the  last  of  the  hours  on 
earth  ? — With  such  thoughts  the  serious  ob- 
server looks  toward  futurity  on  your  account, 
while  you  are  heedlessly,  and  perhaps  you  call 
it  pleasantly,  occupying  your  life  in  the  very 
manner  which  will  bring  at  length  this  convic- 
tion, that  you  have  slighted  and  lost  its  chief 
end. 

Allow  us  to  remind  you  of  so  obvious  a  con- 
sideration, as  that  of  the  rapid  passing  away  of 
your  life.  A  large  proportion  of  you,  of  the 
character  in  question,  have  reached  its  middle 
period,  many  are  going  down  into  its  decline, 
some  have  the  certainty  of  being  near  its  ter- 
mination. And  you  cannot  but  have  been 
often  struck  with  the  reflection,  how  soon  each 
period  of  it,  which  had  been  before  you,  was 
gone  into  the  past.  Have  you  never  felt  an 
impulse  to  quarrel  with  time  for  leaving  you  so 
fast,  after  you  had  perhaps  been  impatient  for 
some  particular  portion  of  it  to  arrive  ?  But  it 
would  neither  stay  to  be  your  companion,  nor 
slacken  to  receive  your  reproach.  It  seems  to 
come  past  you   but  for  the  purpose  of  stealing 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  195 

away  your  life  ;  each  day,  each  lioiir,  taking  off 
a  share  of  that  as  its  spoil.  Observe  how  the 
theft  and  diminution  are  incessantly  going  on, 
while  you  are  planning,  or  consulting,  or  exe- 
cuting, while  you  are  striving  or  relaxing,  ex- 
ulting in  success  or  fretting  at  failure.  The 
one  continual  fact  is,  that  life  is  speeding  off. 

Now  surely  it  is  high  time  to  adopt  a  de- 
termined policy  with  respect  to  that  which, 
while  of  immense  importance  to  you,  is  thus 
continually  deserting  you.  And  the  right  pol- 
icy is,  not  to  attach  yourselves,  as  your  main 
object  of  interest,  to  any  thing  to  which  life 
cannot  "be  attached  and  fixed  in  abidincr  con- 
junction.  In  other  words,  how  is  any  thing 
practically  of  value  but  as  you  can  have  life  for 
its  prosecution,  possession,  and  use?  There 
are  in  the  world  riches,  "  respects  of  honor," 
amusements,  gratifications  of  curiosity,  delights 
of  the  senses,  what  you  please.  If  you  could 
command  life  to  delay,  or  to  take  a  fixed  state, 
so  that  you  might  effectually  appropriate  these, 
and  unite  them  as  it  were  to  your  being,  that 
were  something.  But  by  the  rapid  departure 
of  life,  that  is  to  say,  of  yourselves,  you  are  de- 
nied the  essential  condition  of  makinji  them 
yours.  You  but  snatch  at  them  in  passing, 
hold  them  for  a  moment,  are  carried  away  from 
them  ;  leaving  them  to   make  a  similar   mock- 


196  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

ery  of  offering  themselves  to  the  next  coveters 
in  the  ever-transient  succession.  If  you,  be- 
lieving yourselves  to  be  immortal  beings,  can 
be  content  with  this,  if  you  are  willing  to  place 
your  all  in  things  of  which  your  fleeting  life 
allows  you  to  try  the  good  but  for  a  moment, 
how  mysterious  is  it  that  such  beings  should 
have  come  into  the  world  to  be  so  befooled  ! 

You  will  hardly  be  so  unwitting  as  to  retort, 
that  neither  can  life  be  stayed,  and  rendered  a 
durable  condition,  for  taking:  and  holdincr  the 
goo^  of  the  spiritual  interests,  any  more  than 
of  these  temporal  ones.  This  would  be  true  in 
but  so  narrow  a  sense  as  not  to  be  worth  the 
saying.  For  the  cases  are  infinitely  different. 
It  is  in  the  nature  of  those  higher  interests  that 
they  belong  to  this  life  only  as  a  brief  prepara- 
tory term,  the  great  scene  of  their  enjoyment 
necessarily  being  hereafter.  The  main  prin- 
ciple of  the  aspirant's  connexion  with  them 
here  is  avowedly  not  that  of  possession,  but  of 
anticipation  ;  and  in  that  anticipation  he  sees 
combined  with  them  an  endless  life,  as  his  con- 
dition for  a  full  possession  of  them.  So  that 
he  may  be  more  than  content,  he  may  be  grati- 
fied, that  the  present  life  is  so  fleeting,  because, 
in  beinff  so,  it  hastens  him  toward  that  where 
the  circumstance  of  transiency,  inseparable 
from  the  experience  of  a  created   being,  will 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  197 

seem  lost  in  the  character  of  permanence. 
For,  though  he  must  possess  his  felicities  in  a 
succession  of  duration,  the  assured  eternity  of 
that  duration  will  infuse  a  certain  effect  of  the 
permanence  of  the  whole,  to  be  perceived  in 
every  successive  point ;  thus  precluding  the 
character  of  evanescence  from  the  series  per- 
petually passing.  In  contrast  to  all  this,  yovr 
objects  belong  exclusively  to  time,  and  to  the 
very  short  time  of  your  life  on  earth.  And 
therefore,  the  speedy  pace  of  life  is  the  rapid 
parting  from  all  you  are  possessing,  or  en- 
deavoring to  possess.  And  the  possession  it- 
self during  its  brief  continuance,  is  turned  to 
vanity,  by  your  knowing  that  this  pressing 
haste,  with  which  you  are  carried  away  from 
each  particular  of  it,  is  just  so  much  fatal  speed 
toward  your  losing  it  all. 

But  the  consideration  of  the  rapid  progress  of 
life  toward  a  close,  is  enforced  on  you  by  more 
familiar  and  palpable  forms  of  admonition. 
There  must  often  be  brought  to  your  remem- 
brance events  and  circumstances  in  your  expe- 
rience, which  appear  as  receding  far  into  the 
past.  Can  these  recollections  be  always  unac- 
companied by  the  obvious  reflection.  If  all  the 
time  since  then  be  so  much  taken  out  of  my 
life,  how  reduced  must  be  the  remainder;  and, 
if  the  interval  between  that  time  and  this,  in 
18 


198  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

one  sense  so  wide,  appears  to  have  been  very 
soon  passed  over,  can  1  be  reckoning  on  a 
very  slow  movement,  whicii  shall  afford  leisure 
for  all  manner  of  occupations  or  diversions,  in 
passing  over  any  space  that  can  be  yet  in  re- 
serve for  me  to  traverse  ?  Perhaps  some  of  you 
are  conscious  of  a  feeling  occasionally  arising, 
which  would  shape  itself  into  the  wish  that 
you  could  be  young  again.  Is  this  sentiment 
dismissed  witliout  reminding  you  what  pro- 
gress you  have  made,  and  what  despatch  you 
are  making,  in  the  journey  of  life?  Some  of 
you  see  your  descendants  already  busy  in  the 
worldly  career  ;  can  you  have  evaded  the  sug- 
gestion, what  period  of  your  life  it  must  be  to 
which  this  stage  in  theirs  is  parallel  ;  with  this 
thought  further,  how  soon  they  will,  if  they 
live,  have  reached  the  same  point  in  theirs  as 
you  have  in  yours ;  and  where  will  you  be 
then  ?  When  sometimes  a  tempting  occasion 
is  presented  to  you,  of  embarking  in  a  new 
scheme,  the  thought  will  come  over  you,  like 
one  of  the  cold  winds  precursory  of  winter, 
that  you  are  gone  too  far  for  any  reasonable 
prospect  of  living  long  enough  to  see  such  a 
project  through  to  its  desired  result.  You  are 
compelled  to  a  brief  reluctant  computation,  of 
about  what  stage  in  its  prosecution  might  very 
probably  be  the  last  in  the  course  of  your  activ- 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTAr^ITV.  199 

ilies  under  tlie  yiin.  Some  of  yoii  may  be 
seen  building  a  house,  for  your  more  respect- 
al)le  and  comtnodious  residence  in  the  latter 
part  of  your  life.  When,  in  such  a  case,  we 
iiave  observed  the  care  and  vicfilance  exerted  to 
ensure  that  every  part  and  adjustment  be  firm 
and  durable,  the  question  would  occur,  Is  this 
person,  so  careful  about  the  soundness  of  ma- 
terial, and  security  of  fixture,  of  each  beam, 
each  board,  each  carved  ornament, — is  he  not 
silently  visited  by  any  thought  of  where  he 
shall  be,  long  before  the  time  that  the  structure 
will  show  any  signs  of  decay,  long  before  the 
time  at  which  it  would  vex  him  to  foresee  there 
would  be  any  such  signs?  When  you  are 
planting  young  trees,  for  fruit  or  agreeable 
shade,  can  you  avoid  the  reflection,  how  likely 
it  is,  that  before  these  trees  will  be  matured  to 
their  full  productiveness,  or  be  amply  spread 
and  thickened  round  the  dvvellincr,  or  over  the 
walks,  you  will  have  entered  another  kind  of 
shade?  And  then  '*  whose  shall  those  things 
be  which  you  have  provided?" 

While  exemplifications  of  so  special  a  cast 
will  bear  directly  on  some  of  you  only,  there 
are  many  things  of  a  more  common  kind, 
which  would  admonish  any  of  you  who  would 
practise  a  little  reflection.  Consider  how  often 
you  fail  to  complete  what    you  had   in  inten- 


200  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

tion  limited  to  a  certain  time ;    and  then  you 
say  the  time  was  gone   too  soon  for  you  to  ac- 
complish   it.      You    appropriate    a   portion   of 
time,  to  be  taken  from   business,  to  some  plea- 
surable  pursuit ;    and  how  soon  you    have    to 
say    it    is    gone    like    a    dream  !     The    great 
changes  of  the  year,   or  some  marked  point  of 
it,  the  anniversary  of  your  nativity  for  instance, 
return  upon  you  by  surprise  ;  it  is  but  as  yes- 
terday,  you   exclaim,   since  this  was   here  be- 
fore.     The    appointed  terms    for    transactions 
and   settlements  in   the  course  of  your  affairs 
are   here  upon  you  again,   when   you  seem  to 
have  but  just  got  rid  of  the  last.     Some  of  you 
have   become   afraid  of  pledging  yourselves  to 
do  one  thing,  and    another,    from    experience 
that  the  time  is   apt  to  be  gone  before  you  can 
make  any  effectual  movements.     Many  of  you 
have  begun  to  remark,  that  it  seems  to  go  fas- 
ter now  than  it  did  in  your  earlier  life.     Some 
of  you,  perhaps,  occasionally  fall  into  a  mood 
of  thought,  in  which  you  number  the  years  be- 
tween  your  present  age   and  the  farthest  term 
to  which  it  is  in  any  way  reasonable,  under  the 
most   favorable  circumstances,  to  calculate  that 
you  may  live  ;  and  then  intrudes  the  idea  that, 
(even  supposing  you  assume  that  you  shall  have 
so  many  years  of  life,)  if  th6y  shall  steal  off  as 
fast  as  an  equal  number  of  the  preceding  ones 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  201 

seem  to  have  ^one,  you  will  very  soon  be  at 
the  end.  The  most  aged  class,  if  they  too 
must  still  retain  the  folly  of  reckoning  on  the 
future,  unsubdued  by  the  certain  littleness  of 
their  nearly  exhausted  store,  may  consider, 
whether  even  all  the  infirmities  and  burdens  of 
the  last  stage  will  so  retard  the  lapse  of  time, 
that  a  very  few  more  summers  and  winters  will 
not  quickly  have  vanished  from  between  them 
and  the  exit  out  of  life. 

If  things  in  some  analogy  to  these  were  ex- 
hibited as  the  fancied  circumstances  of  a  fic- 
titious order  and  condition  of  moral  agents,  de- 
vised to  give  a  strong  image  of  a  state  of 
urgency  and  danger,  combined  with  insensibil- 
.  ity,  the  representation  would  excite  no  little  of 
that  sentiment  partaking  of  alarm,  which  you 
can  feel  by  sympathy  for  even  imaginary 
beings.  But  you,  men  of  the  world,  know  that 
this  is  a  plain  description  of  your  actual  situa- 
tion. It  is  yourselves  who  are  beset  by  so 
many  circumstances  to  apprize  you  of  the 
rapidity  of  the  course,  by  which  you  are  pass- 
ing out  of  life.  And  your  unhappy  case  is, 
that  you  make  your  life  as  worthless  to  your 
true  welfare  as  it  is  evanescent  in  its  continu- 
ance, by  rejecting  from  your  care  its  one  grand 
business.  You  act  as  if  you  really  had  under- 
18* 


202  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

Stood  your  existence  here  and  hereafter  not  to 
be  the  same  existence ;  but  that  the  present  life 
was  expressly  appointed  by  the  Creator  to  be 
occupied  with  the  matters  of  this  earth  ex- 
clusively, that  it  was  to  be  altogether  "  of  the 
earth  earthy  ;"  and  that,  for  the  next,  you  are 
to  be  literally  created  anew,  in  a  different 
order  of  being,  constituted  in  a  similar  adap- 
tation to  be  occupied  with  what  there  may  be 
in  another  world,  and  having  no  reference  or 
relation  to  the  previous  and  probationary  state. 
But,  if  such  be  not  the  law  of  your  existence, 
reflect  what  a  fatal  proceeding  you  adopt  in  so 
devoting,  through  this  life,  your  soul  to  this 
world,  that  when  you  leave  it  you  will  find 
the  substantial  thing  that  remains  with  you, 
after  all  its  shadows  and  delusions  are  past,  is 
an  unfitness  for  a  better. 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  203 


CHAPTER    X. 

CONCLUDING   ADMONITION. 

Here  we  conclude  this  long  course  of  re- 
monstrance. Perhaps  you  are  ready  to  say  it 
is  a  rueful  and  offensive  representation,  just 
such  as  a  splenetic  spirit,  which  has  quarrelled 
with  the  world,  would  be  gratified  to  make,  in 
the  wish  to  poison  the  satisfactions  of  those 
who  have  yet  some  cause  to  regard  it  as  a 
friend  ;  and  who,  at  all  events,  think  it  yet  too 
soon  to  fall  into  hostility  with  themselves.  But 
consider  at  whose  cost  it  will  be  that  you  repel 
a  statement  which  you  cannot  refute.  The 
truth  of  the  matter  goes,  in  reality,  no  further 
off  from  you  for  being  rejected  ;  any  more  than 
the  hour  of  death  can  be  deferred  by  refusing 
to  think  of  it,  or  by  heedlessness  of  the  solem- 
nity of  the  prospect.  Where  would  be  the 
sense  of  a  man,  (if  such  a  case  could  be,)  who 
should  turn  with  impatient  disgust  from  the 
sight  of  characteristic  morbid  appearances 
shown  in  a  delineation,  and  at  the  same  time 
be  well  content  to  bear  in  his  own  person  the 
disease  itself?    That    the    preceding   descrip- 


204  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

tion  of  your  state  is  in  substance  the  truth,  we 
may  challenge  you  to  deny  ;  to  deny,  that  is  to 
say,  upon  such  serious  and  honest  considera- 
tion as  you  cannot  refuse  without  being  guilty 
of  the  most  deplorable  trifling,  a  trifling  which 
you  will  in  due  time  meet  with  something  that 
will  avenge.  And  we  may  appeal  to  your  own 
reason,  thus  exercised,  what  you  would  think 
of  a  doctrine  or  a  teacher,  that  would  consent 
to  leave  you  satisfied  with  a  plan  of  life  which, 
for  the  sake  of  this  world,  renounces  the  good, 
and  braves  the  evil,  of  the  world  to  come. 

But,  though  the  representation  thus  far  be  of 
menacing  character,  all  is  not  dark.  As  we 
have  seen  in  a  pictured  view  of  Babylon,  sup- 
posed on  the  eve  of  its  fall,  there  remains  one 
portion  of  the  hemisphere,  and  one  celestial  lu- 
minary, not  yet  obscured  by  the  portentous 
shade.  While  no  colors  can  throw  too  gloomy 
an  aspect  on  the  condition  in  which  you  have 
been  described,  there  shines  on  your  view  still 
that  great  resource  to  which  all  this  series  of 
what  may  have  seemed  austere  reprehensions, 
has  been  aimed  to  constrain  your  attention. 
And  if  you  could  be  made  to  apprehend  the 
importance,  which  there  really  is  in  the  consid- 
erations so  inadequately  conceived  and  ex- 
pressed,  you    would  be  awakened    to  wonder 


MVINT.   FOR   I.\;  MORTALITY.  205 

and  gratitude  that,  after  so  constant  and  sys- 
tematic a  rejection  of  the  sovereign  good,  you 
should    not   now    find    "  a   great  gulf  fixed   be- 
tween it  and  you."     On  your  side  of  that  tre- 
mendous chasm  there  is  still  Religion,  accessi- 
ble to   you   in    all    its   blessings  of  deliverance, 
peace,    and    security    for    hereafter.     You   are 
still   on  that  favored   ground,  where  you  are  in- 
vited  by  a  God  of  mercy,  a  Redeemer  with  his 
atoning  sacrifice,  a  Divine  Spirit  with  all  pow- 
ers and  operations  of  assistance,  to  enter  yet 
at  last  into  the  possession  of  that,  which  will 
be  a  glorious   portion   when  all  you  have  been 
striving  with   the   world  to  gain  will  vanish  in 
dust  and   smoke.     But   be   warned  again,  that 
the  time  is  passing,  and  a  very  short  persistence 
in  your  folly  may  make  it  too  late. 

Shall  we,  in  concluding,  suppose  that  some 
of  you  may  be  disj)osed  to  answer  these  exhor- 
tations in  some  such  manner  as  this  ?  *'  But 
what  can  we  do  ?  We  cannot  make  ourselves 
reJigious.  Though  we  should  admit  that  all 
this  is  true,  and  of  the  last  importance,  we  can- 
not, for  that,  command  and  compel  our  dispo- 
sitions, our  affections,  the  settled  habitude  of 
our  minds,  to  change  into  the  new  order  re- 
quired. What  can  we  do  ?"  The  answer  to 
this  should   be  appropriate   to   the    temper    in 


206  LIVING  F(JR  (MMORTALITY. 

which  it  is  spoken.  We  have  heard  of  instan- 
ces of  expressions  like  these  being  uttered  evi- 
dently in  a  spirit  of  impious  and  desperate 
carelessness.  There  was  no  real  concern  about 
the  subject  ;  but  a  determined  addiction  to  the 
world,  and  to  so  much  of  sin  as  that  should 
involve,  a  wilful  avoidance  of  reflection,  a  stu- 
pid and  defying  indifference  to  .consequences  ; 
and  all  this  taking  to  itself  an  excuse,  or  al- 
most a  justification,  from  the  moral  impotence 
of  our  nature.  The  man  was  in  effect  saying, 
As  I  am  resolved  to  pursue  my  course,  it  were 
a  satisfaction  to  believe,  and  I  will  believe,  that 
I  could  do  no  otherwise  ;  and  as  I  am  to  fulfil 
my  destiny,  the  less  I  trouble  myself  with 
thinking  about  it  the  better.  Now,  to  a  person 
who  should  reply  to  religious  admonitions  in 
this  disposition  of  mind,  we  should  deem  it 
utterly  trifling  and  useless  to  offer  any  pleading 
of  speculately  theological  or  of  metaphysical 
argument.  The  reasoning  faculty  of  such  a 
man  is  a  wretched  slave,  that  will  not,  and  dare 
not,  listen  to  one  woid  in  presence  and  in  con- 
travention of  his  passions  and  will.  The  only 
thinij  there  would  be  any  sense  in  attempting 
would  be,  to  press  on  him  some  strong  images 
of  the  horror  of  such  a  deliberate  self-consign- 
ment to  destruction,  and  of  the  monstrous  enor- 


1 

1 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  207 

mity  of  taking  a  kind  of  comfort  in  his  approach 
to  the  pit,  from  the  circumstance  that  a  prin- 
ciple in  his  nature  leads  him  to  it  ;  just  as  if, 
because  there  is  tlmt  in  him  which  impels  him 
to  perdition,  it  would  iherclore  not  be  he  that 
will  perish.  Till  some  awful  blast  smite  on  his 
fears,  his  reason  and  conscience  will  bo  un- 
availing. 

If  he  be  guarded  on  the  side  of  his  fears, 
by  entertaining  a  light  opinion  of  that  conse- 
quence on  which  he  is  so  precipitating  himself; 
should  he  say,  that  it  certainly  uwuld  be  a 
dreadful  thing  thus  resolutely  to  go  forward 
toward  it,  and  a  flagrantly  absurd  one  thus  to 
satisfy  himself  in  doing  so,  if  he  had  any  such 
appalling  estimate  of  that  future  ruin  as  relig- 
ious doctrine  affects  to  enforce  ;  but  that  lie 
believes  this  threatening  to  be  a  prodigious  ex- 
aggeration ; — we  have  only  to  reply,  that,  as  he 
has  not  y(  t  seen  the  world  of  retribution,  he  is 
to  take  his  estimate  of  its  awards  from  the  de- 
clarations of  Him  who  knows  what  they  are, 
and  that  it  is  at  his  peril  he  assumes  to  en- 
tertain any  other. — If  any  one  answer  to  this, 
that  he  does  not  believe  in  the  existence  of 
any  such  declarations,  he  is  not  one  of  the 
persons  we  are  meaning  to  address. 

But  some   of  you  will  make  the  supposed  re- 


208  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY, 

ply,  "  What  can  we  do  ?"    in   a  less  depraved 
temper  of  feeling.     We  will  suppose,   that  you 
are   not  quite   indifferent  on  the  subject,  that 
you   seriously   admit  the  necessity  of  religion, 
that  you  feel  some  uneasiness  at  your  estrange- 
ment   from  it,  that,    in    short,    you   wish  you 
could  be  religious,  and  in  this  spirit  somewhat 
despondingly  put    the    question.     For  you  we 
have  a  plain  short  answer  ; — indeed,  we  have 
anticipated  this  in  some  preceding  part  of  the 
discourse.     You    can   deliberately   apply  your- 
selves to  a  serious,  honest,   prolonged,  repeated 
consideration  of  the  subject.     Do  not  incur  the 
shame,  for  one  moment,  of  pretending  to  doubt 
whether  you  can  do  this.     On  any  one  of  your 
worldly  matters  of  importance,  you   know  that 
you  can  fix  your   thouglits,    attentively,   long, 
and  again  ;  you   can   severely  examine  in  what 
manner  it  is  connected  with  your  interests,  can 
weiirh  the  reasons  for  and   aorainst,   and   look 
forward  to  near  and  more  distant  consequences. 
And  you   can  do  all   this   with  respect  to  relig- 
ion.    Do  you   allege  that,   the  subject  being  a 
strange    and     hitherto    foreign    one    to    your 
thoughts,  and  also  presenting  itself  to  you  with 
a    disquieting    and    reproachful    aspect,    your 
minds  are  strongly  inclined  to  escape  from  be- 
holding it  ?    What  then  ?    You  can  think  again 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  209 

of  the  absolute  necessity  of  considering  it,  and 
can  compel  them  back  to  confront  it  once  more, 
and  still  again.  You  can  recollect  that  noth- 
ing will  be  gained,  and  all  will  be  lost,  by  ceas- 
ing to  think  of  it.  You  can  reflect  that,  if  you 
dismiss  it  now,  because  it  does  not  please  you, 
it  will  inf^illibly  return  upon  you  ere  long  to 
please  yon  still  less;  and  will  return  ultimately 
in  such  imperative  force,  that  it  can  no  more 
be  evaded  or  dismissed. 

Perhaps  there  may  be  some  of  you  who 
will  complain,  that,  notwithstanding  sincere 
and  considerable  efforts  to  this  purpose,  you 
find  that  the  subject  does  not,  and  seems  as 
if  it  would  not,  take  effectual  hold  on  your 
spirits  ;  that  you  cannot  fed  it  to  have  that  im- 
portance which  you  know  it  to  have.  And 
what  then  ?  Again  we  reply.  Arc  you  going 
to  make  this  a  reason  for  suffering  your  minds 
to  withdraw  from  the  subject  and  let  it  go, — 
the  subject  which  cannot  go  without  abandon- 
ing you  to  the  dominion  of  death  ?  The  ques- 
tion whether  to  yield  to  this  obstinate  defect  of 
sensibility,  is  the  critical  point  of  your  contest 
with  the  deadly  power  of  evil,  within  you  and 
without  you.  Yield,  and  all  will  hasten  to 
ruin.  But,  surely,  the  terror  of  such  a  hazard 
19 


210  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

and  such  an  alternative,  or  the  clear  conviction 
at  least  that  you  OKglit  to  feel  terror  at  if, 
must  incite  you  to  persevering  and  more  earnest 
efforts.  Look  at  it,  dwell  on  it,  and  see  wheth- 
er a  more  protracted  and  intense  consideration 
of  it  will  cause  or  suffer  your  resolution  to  re- 
mit. That  it  should  so  remit,  is  hardly  con- 
ceivable of  any  rational  being.  But  if  it  even 
did  so  remit,  that  circumstance  itself  would 
bring  a  new  and  frightful  phenomenon  to  rouse 
the  spirit  which  had  such  a  consciousness,  and 
excite  it  to  call  for  all  compassionate  powers 
and  agencies  to  come  to  its  rescue. 

And  here  you  are  to  be  admonished,  that  you 
cannot  feel  that  you  are  faithfully  making  the 
required  exertion,  unless  you  have  recourse  to 
the  most  approved  means  for  rendering  it  effec- 
tual. You  cannot  answer  it  to  God  or  your  con- 
science, that  you  are  doing  justice  to  your  souls, 
in  this  their  dangerous  crisis,  unless  you  have 
the  resolution  to  withdraw  yourselves  as  much 
as  possible  from  trifling  company  ;  to  seize 
from  your  secular  occupations  some  portions  of 
your  time  for  solemn  thought ;  to  forego  some 
recreations,  not  perhaps  sinful  in  themselves, 
for  the  sake  of  employing  the  time  on  the  most 
pressing  concern  in  all  existence  ;  to  read  se- 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  211 

rioiis  books,  with  an  effort  of  your  own  to  in- 
culcate their  instructions  on  your  minds  ;  and 
read  this  excellent  book,  "  Doddriuge's  Rise 
AND  Progress  of  Religion  in  the  Soul," 
which  we  commend  to  your  serious  and 
thoughtful  perusal  ;  but  especially  converse 
with  the  Word  of  Life  itself.  And  there  is  yet 
one  more  expedient,  of  obvious  duty  and  prac- 
ticability, and  superlative  in  efficacy.  You  be- 
lieve that  the  Almighty  admits  his  creatures, 
and  indeed  has  with  endless  iteration  invited 
and  commanded  them,  to  express  their  neces- 
sities in  petitions  to  Him  ;  and  that  he  listens 
with  peculiar  favor,  to  applications  for  spiritual 
good.  You  are  not  afraid  to  do  this  ;  and  you 
are  convinced,  on  the  strength  of  innumera- 
ble promises,  and  of  the  merits  and  interces- 
sion of  Christ,  that  it  would  be  successful. 
Though  there  did  not  appear  to  be  any  z'm- 
mediatc  success,  you  believe,  you  absolutely 
know,  that  persevering  application  to  Heaven 
will  finally  prevail.  You  can,  with  this  abso- 
lute assurance,  implore  the  removal  of  that 
odious  insensibility,  that  indisposition,  that 
aversion  even,  which  you  allege  as  a  discour- 
agement from  persisting  to  apply  yourselves  to 
the  all-important  subject,  and   feel  as  a  temp- 


212  LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY. 

tation  to  turn  away  from  it.  This  can  be 
done,  a  thousand  times  over.  It  can  be  done 
as  lonij  as  the  evil  and  the  danger  continue. 
And  each  day  of  their  prolonged  continu- 
ance supplies  a  stronger,  and  still  stronger 
motive,  to  a  more  earnest  use  of  the  sover- 
eign expedient.  And  again  and  again  we  tell 
you,  that  at  each  repetition  you  know,  be- 
cause God  has  declared  it,  that  such  appli- 
cation cannot  ultimately  fail.  Let  this  be 
done,  and  you  are  victorious.  And  O  is  it 
not  worth  while  ! 

Now,  you  must  acknowledge,  that  this  is 
what  you  can  do.  But  what !  are  we  about 
to  use  a  language  seeming  to  imply  that  you 
zre  7'eluctant  to  acknowledge  it?  What!  are 
we  supposing  you  would  wish  it  rather  proved 
that  you  cannot  perform  this  simple,  effica- 
cious, inestimable  service  to  your  immortal 
spirits  ?  Is  it  possible,  that,  because  the  pro- 
cess of  discipline  is  hard,  (it  is  confessedly 
so,)  you  would  be  willing  to  find  in  its  im- 
practicability a  deliverance  from  its  obliga- 
tion,— at  the  cost,  the  inconceivable  cost,  of 
losing  its  great  object  ?  Is  your  professed 
thoughtfulness  on  the  subject  rather  employed 
in  trying  and  feeling    the    state  of  your    fac- 


LIVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY.  213 

ullies,  to  verify  that  there  are  invincible  bonds 
of  fate  around  you,  than  in  seeking  the  in- 
tervention of  that  hand  whicii  can  break  all 
the  bondage  off?  Beware  that,  while  you 
pretend  a  solicitude  for  your  eternal  welfare, 
you  be  not,  in  fact,  rather  seeking  to  make 
a  melancholy  provision  against  the  event  of  its 
failure,  in  the  delusion  of  finding  a  resource  of 
extenuation  in  some  mysterious  destiny,  or  the 
determination  of  the  Almighty. 


214  THE  LOSS  OF  A  SOUL  ! 


THE    LOSS    OF    A    SOUL  ! 

The  following  sublime  passage  is  copied  from  a  Ser- 
mon of  the  late  Rev.  Robert  Hall,  of  England, 
delivered  on  the  Death  of  the  Princess  Charlotte  in 
1817.  Its  eloquence  and  solemnity  cannot  fail  to 
command  attention,  and  the  whole  is  peculiarly 
apposite  to  the  subject  discussed  in  the  preceding 
pages. 

We  are  made  for  the  enjoyment  of  eternal 
blessedness ;  it  is  our  high  calling  and  destina- 
tion ;  and  not  to  pursue  it  with  diligence  is  to 
be  guilty  of  the  blackest  ingratitude  to  the  Au- 
thor of  our  being,  as  well  as  the  greatest  cru- 
elty to  ourselves.  To  fail  of  such  an  object,  to 
defeat  the  end  of  our  existence,  and  in  conse- 
quence of  neglecting  the  great  salvation,  to 
sink  at  last  under  the  frown  of  the  Almighty,  is 
a  calamity  which  words  were  not  invented  to 
express,  nor  finite  minds  formed  to  grasp. 
Eternity,  it  is  surely  not  necessary  to  remind 
you,  invests  every  state,  whether  of  bliss  or  of 
suffering,  with  a  mysterious  and  awful  impor- 
tance, entirely  its  own,  and  is  the  only  prop- 
erty in  the  creation  which  gives  that  weight 
and  moment  to  whatever  it  attaches,  compared 
to  which  all  sublunary  joys  and  sorrows,  all  in- 


THE  LOSS  OF  A  SOUL  !  215 

terests  which  know  a  period,  fade  into  the 
most  contemptible  insignificance.  In  appreci- 
ating every  otlier  object,  it  is  easy  to  exceed 
tlie  proper  estimate  ;  and  even  of  the  distress- 
ing event  which  has  so  recently  occurred,  the 
feeling  which  many  of  us  possess  is  probably 
adequate  to  the  occasion.  The  nation  has  cer- 
tainly not  been  wanting  in  the  proper  expres- 
sion of  its  poignant  regret  at  the  sudden  re- 
moval of  this  most  lamented  princess,  nor  of 
their  sympathy  with  the  royal  family,  deprived 
by  this  visitation  of  its  brightest  ornament. 
Sorrow  is  painted  in  every  countenance,  the 
pursuits  of  business  and  of  pleasure  have  been 
suspended,  and  the  kingdom  is  covered  with 
the  signals  of  distress.  But  what,  my  brethren, 
if  it  be  lawful  to  indulge  such  a  thought,  what 
would  be  the  funeral  obsequies  of  a  lost  soul  ? 
Where  shall  we  find  the  tears  fit  to  be  wept  at 
such  a  spectacle  ?  or,  could  we  realize  the  ca- 
lamity in  all  its  extent,  what  tokens  of  commis- 
eration and  concern  would  be  deemed  equal  to 
the  occasion  ?  Would  it  suffice  for  the  sun  to 
veil  his  light  and  the  moon  her  brightness  ;  to 
cover  the  ocean  with  mourning,  and  the  heav- 
ens with  sackcloth  ?  or,  were  the  whole  fabric 
of  nature  to  become  animated  and  vocal,  would 
it  be  possible    for    her   to   utter   a   groan   too 


216  THE  LOSS  OF  A  SOUL  ! 

deep,  or  a  cry  too  piercing,  to  express  the  mag- 
nitude and  extent  of  such  a  catastrophe  1 

But  it  is  time  to  draw  the  veil  over  this 
heart-withering  prospect,  remembering  only 
what  manner  of  persons  we  ovght  to  be,  who 
are  walking  on  the  brink  of  such  an  eternity, 
and  possess  no  assurance  but  that  the  next  mo- 
ment will  convey  us  to  the  regions  of  happiness 
or  of  despair.  Impressed  habitually  with  this 
solemn  recollection,  we  shall  rejoice  as  those 
who  rejoice  not,  we  shall  weep  as  those  who 
weep  not,  we  shall  use  the  world  as  not  abusing 
it,  remembering  that  the  end  of  all  things  i$ 
at  hand. 

It  is  scarcely  to  be  supposed  that  so  remark- 
able an  example  of  the  frailty  and  uncertainty 
of  life  as  the  recent  providence  has  displayed^ 
has  failed  of  impressing  serious  reflection  on 
the  minds  of  multitudes  :  it  is  difficult  to  con- 
ceive of  that  degree  of  insensibility  which  could 
totally  resist  such  a  warning.  But  there  is 
reason  to  fear  that  in  a  great  majority  of  in- 
stances it  has  produced  no  salutary  fruit,  and 
will  leave  them,  after  a  very  short  period,  as 
careless  and  unconcerned  about  a  preparation 
for  a  hereafter  as  before  ! 


